Silenced

MONDAY 3 MARCH 2008

The corridor was full of bustling activity when Fredrika Bergman got into work on the Monday. Ellen Lind gave her a wide grin as they met, just outside her room.

‘You look radiant! Are you sleeping better now?’

Fredrika nodded and returned the smile happily, feeling almost embarrassed without knowing why. She did not really know why she was sleeping better, either. Perhaps the effect of Saturday’s family dinner had been more positive than she had predicted. And perhaps playing her violin was helping. Now that she had started, she could not stop. The memory was in her fingers and although she made some mistakes, she found she could play piece after piece.

Alex, by contrast, looked as though he had not slept particularly well as he opened the meeting in the Den a short time later and ran through what had come to light over the weekend.

He’s sinking, Fredrika thought anxiously. And we’re not lifting a finger to help him.

Peder and Joar had chosen seats as far away from each other as they could and were both staring fixedly straight ahead. The group had gone from tight-knit to unravelling in just a few days. Fredrika noted with some relief that for once the conflict did not centre on her.

‘I’ve checked out what Ragnar Vinterman told us about Erik Sundelius: the official warnings from his professional body and the prosecution for manslaughter. And it’s all correct,’ said Peder. ‘The question is how it’s significant, in the context.’

‘Need it be significant at all?’ Fredrika asked. ‘Need it be significant in this particular case that Jakob Ahlbin’s psychiatrist treated two other patients negligently, resulting in their suicide? We still don’t think Jakob killed either himself, or his wife.’

‘No,’ said Alex deliberately. ‘No, we don’t. On the other hand, we don’t know exactly what we think did happen, either.’

Fredrika looked doubtful.

‘I’ve been thinking a bit about the Ahlbin sisters,’ she said. ‘And I’m starting to wonder if we’ve made a mistake in separating the two oddities, so to speak.’

The others looked blank, and Fredrika made haste to explain.

‘We keep talking as though the obscure elements in the case have nothing to do with each other. Jakob Ahlbin seems to have shot his wife and then himself, but we still don’t believe it. Johanna Ahlbin seems to have vanished from the face of the Earth, but we don’t know for sure. And there are various reasons for suspecting irregularities in the matter of Karolina Ahlbin’s death, but there, too, we don’t know exactly what may have gone wrong.’

Fredrika paused for breath.

‘What if they’re all interconnected? That’s all I wanted to say.’

With his chin propped in one hand, Alex looked ten years older than he really was.

‘Well,’ he began, ‘I’m pretty sure nobody here has been imagining things aren’t interconnected, the problem is that we can’t quite see how. What thoughts did you have?’

‘I thought it might not have been Karolina who died,’ said Fredrika, squirming a little. ‘I know it sounds mad, of course.’

‘But she was identified by her own sister,’ said Peder, frowning. ‘And she had her driving licence on her.’

‘But how hard is it to get hold of a fake driving licence if you need to?’ asked Fredrika. ‘And what are the odds of a doctor finding out it isn’t genuine? Karolina Ahlbin was identified by a sister whom we haven’t seen hide or hair of since. And if Karolina’s still alive, we know we haven’t seen her either. And that’s the crucial problem, as I see it. Why aren’t they getting in touch, even though the story’s all over the media?’

No one said anything. They had all seen that morning’s papers – full of whole-page articles telling the Ahlbin family’s story. This time the journalists had managed to find pictures of the two girls, too.

‘WHERE IS JOHANNA AHLBIN?’ shrieked one of the headlines, suggesting something could have happened to her, too.

‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Alex said to Fredrika, ‘and of course – you may be right. But there could be less dramatic explanations for these anomolies. Karolina Ahlbin hasn’t been in touch for the simple reason that she’s dead, and Johanna because she hasn’t found out what’s happened yet. But I agree – if she hasn’t come forward by the middle of the week we’ll have to take other steps.’

‘You don’t think anything could have happened to her, do you?’ asked Joar.

‘Either that or it’s like Fredrika says, and she’s got reasons of her own to keep away from the police.’

He turned to Fredrika.

‘Over to something else,’ he said. ‘You made a very good point about the content of the emails and the fact that Tony Svensson could have been contacted by whoever wrote the emails that weren’t sent from his own computer. I had a word with the prosecutor and we can bring him in again. I want Joar and Peder to interview him together.’

He raised his eyes, and there was anger in them.

‘Together,’ he said. ‘Understood?’

The two men nodded.

‘Fredrika’s tackling the library in Farsta,’ Alex went on. ‘And I want us to keep chipping away at the circumstances surrounding Karolina’s death. See if anyone’s shown an interest in the body; there’ll have to be a funeral and so on. Maybe she had some bloke we haven’t heard about yet. Get back in touch with the hospital and keep damn well digging.’

Fredrika nodded and looked happy with that.

Alex looked around him distractedly.

‘I think that’s it for now,’ he said.

‘But what about the officer?’ Peder objected. ‘The one with the Norrmalm Police, that Tony Svensson was in touch with?’

‘I’ll deal with that myself,’ said Alex. ‘We’ll have another meeting here at four o’clock this afternoon.’

They were interrupted by a vigorous knock, and a detective from the Stockholm CID put his head round the door.

‘I’ve just got some information to pass on about Muhammad Abdullah, who you and Fredrika went to see in Skärholmen last week,’ he said, his eyes on Alex.

‘Oh yes?’ said Alex, none too pleased by the interruption.

‘He’s dead,’ the detective said. ‘He had to go out on some sort of business yesterday, and he didn’t come back. His wife alerted the police last night but she didn’t get any help until this morning. He was found shot in the head in a car park not far from where they live.’

Fredrika felt dismay and sorrow. The man had been pleasant and cooperative, despite feeling under threat. And now he was gone.

Alex swallowed.

‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he said quietly.

‘And that’s not all,’ said the visitor. ‘Yesterday evening, a jogger came across a dead body that had been dumped in the water at Brunnsviken, where the jogging track follows the shoreline. The man hasn’t been identified, but initial indications are that he was shot with the same weapon as Muhammad Abdullah.’

It had been a long and trying night for Alex, lying sleepless beside his wife, hour after hour. Thoughts of Lena seared him like fire. He had promised himself to try and talk to her over the weekend, but had not been up to it. Or had not dared.

What if she’s ill, what if it’s Alzheimer’s, he thought dully. What the hell will I do then?’

The fear of it paralysed him. He wished she would tell him what was wrong, since he was too weak to make the first move.

Fredrika came charging in, stomach first. She was back up to speed now, with only a month to go until her due date.

‘I just wanted to tell you I’m off to the hospital now.’

‘Sounds like a good start,’ said Alex.

‘I rang Farsta Library, too,’ she went on, ‘and they promised to get back to me. They haven’t got the data stored on computer so they were going to look it up in their log book.’

A man from the technical division knocked on the door behind Fredrika.

‘Yes?’ Alex demanded.

‘We spotted something when we were checking out the Ahlbins’ telephone subscription,’ said the technician.

‘Uhuh?’

‘Notice that they wanted to cancel their landline subscription was sent in writing to Telia a week before the murders, with a request for the subscription to end on Tuesday the 26th of February, that’s to say, the day they died.’

‘Who signed the letter?’ asked Alex.

‘Jakob Ahlbin himself. And he also rang and cancelled his mobile contract the day he died.’

‘And his wife’s mobile?’

The technician cleared his throat.

‘That was active until last Wednesday morning, and then the contract was terminated. We don’t know who by.’

‘Has anyone rung it?’ asked Alex.

The technician nodded.

‘In the time since we’ve had it here, the mobile operator has only registered two incoming calls: one from an unidentified number in Bangkok and one from a parishioner who clearly didn’t know she was dead.’

‘Bangkok?’ Fredrika echoed in surprise.

‘Yep.’

‘So he cancelled his phone subscription,’ Alex said. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘If it was him who did it,’ Fredrika put in.

‘Just so, if it was him who did it…’

‘Which it probably wasn’t,’ Fredrika went on. ‘It seems more likely, doesn’t it, that it was the same person who cancelled Marja’s, a bit later?’

‘It’s perfectly possible to cancel another person’s telephone subscription,’ the technician put in. ‘The only information they ask for, to check it’s the subscriber ringing, is basic stuff like national identity number and home address.’

Alex nodded and knitted his brows.

‘The question is,’ he said irascibly, ‘why the hell was that so important? Cutting off their phones?’

The technician withdrew and a cleaner passed by in the corridor. Fredrika nodded to him that it was fine to do her office.

Alex picked up the report of the two fatal shootings the night before. The man found in the water at Brunnsviken had probably died only an hour or so before the jogger found him. The murderer might very well not have thought anyone would be out jogging in Haga Park at midnight, and not expected the body to be found so soon. As for Muhammad Abdullah, he had died about two hours before the other man.

Same weapon, same perpetrator, Alex wondered. A peripatetic murderer, then.

As if reading his thoughts, Fredrika said:

‘I think we can assume it was the same perpetrator in both cases.’

Alex waited a moment and then asked:

‘And the link to Jakob Ahlbin? If there is one?’

‘Yes, I think there must be one,’ said Fredrika, looking thoughtful.

Then she said:

‘I think they both needed silencing, and that’s the link.’

Alex’s eyes grew wide.

‘But why?’

‘That’s what I don’t get,’ Fredrika said frustratedly. ‘Muhammad Abdullah was open with us about being scared when we met him, and with hindsight we know he had reason to be. And Jakob Ahlbin seems to have had reason to be fearful, too, but the question is whether he was aware of it himself.’

‘Exactly,’ said Alex. ‘And why was Muhammad Abdullah so bloody petrified, in fact? Well, because he was convinced he’d had sensitive information entrusted to him, and because he was scared the police were going to start looking into his connections with the traffickers.’

‘And he had time to pass the sensitive information about the new migrant-smuggling network on to Jakob,’ Fredrika supplied.

‘One of those emails told Jakob to stop looking. Does that mean he was actively seeking out information that he should have steered clear of?’

‘Seems a fair assumption.’

‘But can that really be the link?’ Alex said dubiously. ‘I mean, it sounded like something positive for the refugees that there might be this cheaper, better alternative that would mean not having to put themselves into the hands of corrupt gangsters.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Fredrika. ‘It really would be odd if people smuggling refugees on generous terms went in for killing vicars at the same time.’

The cleaner had finished and gave Fredrika a little wave as he came back past Alex’s room. Then something else occurred to her.

‘The man who was killed by the car outside the university,’ she said.

‘The murdered bank robber?’ queried Alex.

‘Yes, him,’ said Fredrika. ‘He had supposedly come into the country that “new” way, according to Muhammad, so it seems quite likely that he had some insight into how it operated. And he was murdered, too.’

Alex looked doubtful.

‘And the man in Haga Park?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Fredrika, feeling her pulse rate rise. ‘But there’s something about that story that feels terribly… close… I just can’t put my finger on it.’

Alex stood up and looked at his watch.

‘I’m going to try and track down this officer in Norrmalm who had contact with Tony Svensson,’ he said determinedly. ‘And let’s hope the national CID can come up with more detail on these other murders during the day. Meanwhile, you find out all you can about goings on around Karolina’s death.’

‘Right, I’ll get straight on with it,’ Fredrika said with equal resolution, and leapt out of her seat with surprising agility.

Alex’s face split into a grin. The real Fredrika Bergman was back.

For the second time in swift succession, Tony Svensson was brought in for police questioning. This time he was rather less cooperative, and stared mutinously at Peder Rydh and Joar Sahlin as they came into the interview room.

‘I’ve said everything there is to say,’ he bellowed. ‘You hear? I’m not saying another word, I tell you!’

Then he planted himself on his seat, folded his arms and glowered at them.

Behind that façade of strength and cockiness, Peder could see something else: fear. He hoped it would not pass the clueless Joar by.

Peder was quite happy with the way his week had started. He loved it when things started hotting up at work, it was a good distraction from all the painful private stuff. Recent developments on the case had also meant a postponement of his appointment with the workplace psychologist.

‘We’ll get going on that when there’s time,’ Alex ruled, and promised he would personally ring Margareta Berlin, head of HR.

So Peder was able to focus exclusively on Tony Svensson.

‘We’ve just got a few follow-up questions,’ he said quietly.

Tony Svensson continued to look furious.

‘I’m saying nothing,’ he hissed.

Not true, thought Peder sarcastically, you’re talking non-stop.

‘Is there any special reason for that?’ asked Joar.

He’s got it, thought Peder. The question is whether he’s going to fritter our advantage away again.

‘Is there any special reason for what?’ snapped Tony Svensson.

He clearly had the will to communicate after all – he just wanted some guarantees.

‘Is there any special reason why you’re refusing to talk to us any more?’ Joar asked slowly.

No reaction. Tony Svensson’s mouth was clamped shut.

‘I think it was like this,’ said Joar, leaning across the table. ‘You felt pretty calm last time you were here, because you knew we only wanted to talk about what you had against Jakob Ahlbin, and because you knew that would all sort itself out. It wasn’t you who sent those last emails and you knew we’d find that out sooner or later.’

Joar took his time, trying to read in Tony’s face whether he was getting through.

‘But this time you’re scared, because we want to talk about something else all of a sudden, and you know as well as we do that there aren’t that many subjects we’d want to ask you about.’

He leant back in his chair again, giving Tony his cue to speak by adjusting the balance of power at the table. But Tony said nothing and his face was hard to read.

‘We think you went round to Jakob Ahlbin’s because he was interfering in your affairs again, and we think somebody else sent you to do that,’ Peder said softly. ‘And the only thing we want and need to know is who your contact was and what you were supposed to do or say.’

He tried to catch Tony Svensson’s eye, running one hand across the table as if to brush away some invisible speck of dirt.

‘Jakob Ahlbin and his wife were shot in the head,’ he said in a businesslike tone, but keeping his voice low to encourage a feeling of mutual confidence. ‘My colleague and I will find it very hard not to tie you into this investigation on suspicion of being an accessory to murder, unless you can give us some good reasons not to.’

Tony Svensson still refused to speak, and his solicitor put a discreet hand on his lower arm. Tony pulled his arm away quickly.

Shit, thought Peder. They must have put the frighteners on him to a point where he’s more scared of whoever he’s working for than he is of going to jail for being an accessory to murder.

‘What did they say they’d do to you if you blabbed to anyone?’ asked Joar, as if he had read Peder’s mind. ‘Did they threaten to shut you up for good? Or were they going to make do with a good beating?’

Still no answer, but Peder could see Tony Svensson’s jaws grinding.

‘I saw in your paperwork that you’ve got a daughter,’ he ventured.

And provoked a very physical reaction.

‘Don’t you touch her!’ roared Tony Svensson, leaping up. ‘Don’t you touch her!’

Joar and Peder stayed in their seats.

‘Please sit back down,’ Joar said mildly.

Peder tried to get Tony to look him in the eye.

‘Was it her they were going after?’ he asked. ‘Was it her they were going to take if you squealed?’

Tony Svensson subsided onto his chair like a punctured balloon. He did not look at either of them, just put his elbows on the table and leant his head in his hands.

‘Was that it, Tony?’ asked Joar.

And – finally – got a silent nod in reply.

Peder breathed a sigh of relief.

‘We can help her, Tony,’ he said. ‘We can help you both. If you’ll just talk to us.’

‘Like hell you can,’ Tony said hoarsely. ‘Don’t you fucking well say you can protect any of us from them. Not a bleeding chance.’

Peder and Joar looked at each other for the first time in the interview.

‘Oh yes we can,’ Peder said assertively. ‘And we can do it well, what’s more. Much better than you could do yourself.’

Tony Svensson gave a weary laugh.

‘If you believe that, then you haven’t got a fucking clue about all this,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘My only protection, my only bloody hope of surviving this and getting my daughter through it unharmed, is to not talk to you. Have you got that? If you really want to save me, you fucking well let me out of here right now.’

A chair scraped on the floor as the solicitor made a slight movement.

‘All we need is a name,’ said Joar. ‘That’s all – then we’ll take care of the rest of it.’

‘If you get your fucking name, there won’t be any “the rest of it”,’ bellowed Tony Svensson. ‘I haven’t got a name. I’ve just got a fucking ugly face.’

‘But that’s enough,’ said Peder. ‘Then at least you can identify him. We can give you pictures to look at and if you recognise him…’

Tony Svensson’s harsh laugh cut him off in mid-flow and bounced back off the bare walls.

‘Look at pictures,’ he said dejectedly. ‘You lot are fucking floundering and you don’t even know it. It’s not somebody like me you’re looking for, you fucking numbskulls.’

Peder leant forward.

‘What are we looking for, then?’ he asked tensely.

Tony Svensson clamped his mouth shut.

‘I’m not saying another word,’ he growled.

Peder hesitated.

‘Okay then, tell us something about what you had to do, instead.’

Tony Svensson was listening.

‘If you don’t want to tell us who your contact was, at least tell us what they wanted you to do.’

There was silence while Tony Svensson thought over what Peder had just proposed.

‘I had to stop sending emails,’ he said under his breath. ‘And it was no skin off my nose, because like I said, our problems were sorting themselves out. But then there was another thing.’

He hesitated.

‘I had to go round to the vicar’s and ring at his door. And hand over an envelope.’

‘Do you know what was in it?’

Tony Svensson shook his head. He looked despondent now.

‘No, but it was important that it was handed over on that particular day.’

‘And Jakob took it from you?’

‘Yes. He looked surprised to see it was me, but then he realised it wasn’t about Ronny Berg.’

Joar drummed his fingers lightly on the table.

‘Did he read the letter while you waited?’

Tony sneered.

‘Yeah, he did as it happens. He was fucking furious, and told me to tell the people who’d sent me that they ought to think twice before threatening him. He said he was going to burn the letter when I’d gone.’

‘What did you get for doing those things?’ asked Peder.

Tony Svensson looked him squarely in the eye.

‘I got to carry on living,’ he answered. ‘And if I’m lucky, and if I play my cards right, my daughter will as well.’

‘So they threatened to harm her if you didn’t do it?’ Peder said gently.

Tony Svensson nodded, his eyes strangely watery. Joar seemed to be thinking hard; then he sat up straight and threw back his shoulders.

‘They’ve got her,’ he said, sounding almost fascinated. ‘They took her as a guarantee that you’d carry out your part of the operation.’

Peder stared from Joar to Tony Svensson.

‘Is that right?’ he asked.

‘That’s right,’ he said darkly. ‘And I’ve no idea how they’re fucking well going to react to me coming in here again.’

When they had finished the interview with Tony Svensson, Peder and Joar requested a few minutes to confer before they let him go home again.

‘I don’t think he’s bluffing,’ said Peder as soon as the two of them were alone.

The intensity of the hatred he felt for his colleague was affecting his judgement. The only thing softening his feelings a touch was the events of the weekend, when his son was ill and he had spent Saturday evening and most of Sunday with Ylva.

‘It’s important for us to stick together when we need to,’ he told her when she got back from the hospital to find him in the kitchen, preparing dinner for them all.

As if they were a family. As if they actually belonged together.

Ylva agreed with him and for the first time in ages, they spent a peaceful evening together. He asked how things were going at work, and she said she was feeling much better now. He was glad to hear it, but could not bring himself to talk about his own situation. He had never been able to bear feeling inferior to her in any way, and this was no exception.

Joar’s voice brought him back to the present with a bump.

‘I don’t think he’s bluffing either, and I definitely think we need to take the threat scenario seriously, but…’

‘But what?’ demanded Peder.

‘I’m just not sure they’ve got his daughter as he claims.’

‘I am,’ Peder asserted, without much thought about what he was saying.

Which gave Joar the upper hand again.

‘Really? Think it through carefully, Peder. Why would they take such a risk – because it is, a huge one – as to grab his daughter at the start? They could scarcely let her go again afterwards, she’d be able to identify every single one of them. Which would mean they’d have to kill her, and then they’d be child murderers. There are plenty of hard men and ruffians who’d go a bloody long way to avoid that.’

‘But damn it, this lot don’t seem to be your normal ruffians.’

‘True. Which makes it all the more implausible. They’re too intelligent to take it out on a small child. I don’t doubt for a moment that they threatened to, though. But that’s another matter.’

‘So you mean Tony Svensson’s lying about his daughter being abducted so we’ll back off a bit?’

‘Exactly. And keep our distance from him in future.’

Peder thought about this.

‘Doesn’t really feel like an option. Keeping our distance, I mean.’

‘You’re right there,’ said Joar grimly. ‘So I suggest you go in and wind up the interview and get the paperwork out of the way while I go up to the department and get a snap decision out of them to have this guy followed when he walks out of here. I reckon he’ll go straight home to his daughter to check she’s okay. And then it wouldn’t surprise me if he rings some contact on the other side to let him know everything’s fine and he hasn’t given us any crucial information.’

Just for the moment, Peder felt quite serene. They already had Tony Svensson’s phone tapped. Perhaps by the end of the day they would have the names of some of the men who had been threatening him.

It happened more and more rarely these days, but just occasionally Spencer Lagergren and his wife Eva would both be at home in the middle of the day and would make lunch together. Spencer had no idea what had prompted Eva to suggest one of these lunches on this particular day, but he knew better than to go against her wishes.

He got back from work to be greeted by appetising aromas the minute he opened the front door.

‘You’ve already made a start,’ he remarked when he came out into the kitchen a few minutes later.

‘Of course,’ said Eva. ‘Couldn’t just hang around waiting for you.’

Spencer knew very well that the relationship he had with his wife was a mystery to his lover Fredrika Bergman, and sometimes he felt the same himself. The element of total absurdity that the relationship had acquired now he was expecting a baby with another woman was getting harder and harder to handle. But it had been impossible, of course, not to tell Eva about the undertaking he had made and the changes this was going to make to his life. At quite an early stage they had both taken to having other relationships outside their marriage, but it was ultimately only Spencer who had decided to keep seeing the same person for years. He knew it disturbed his wife, who had never been able to make any of her adventures on the side last long. But then it disturbed him that her lovers had been so many in number. And sometimes so young. As if there were any legitimate reason for him to have objections to her choice of male acquaintances.

‘We scarcely saw each other at the weekend,’ Eva said almost cheerfully, ‘so I thought it would be a good idea to have a bit of time to ourselves now, over lunch.’

Oven-baked lamb and potato was sizzling away and there was a big bowl of salad on the kitchen table. A thought flashed through his mind. Dare he eat any of this? Wasn’t she behaving rather strangely?

‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble, I see,’ he said, going to the fridge to get some drinks.

‘Oh one has to sometimes, my dear,’ Eva said sternly. ‘Otherwise one might as well just bloody give up.’

Spencer tensed. In thirty years of marriage he had only ever heard his wife swear five times. But he made no comment.

‘Wouldn’t you say?’ she demanded.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said, not sounding as though he believed – or even understood – what he was saying.

Her long fingers clasped the bottle of balsamic vinegar. Salad dressing was a must.

‘How was your weekend?’ she asked, thumping the vinegar bottle down onto the table.

It was enough of a statement for him to grasp that something was wrong. He slowly shut the fridge door and turned round. And saw her on the other side of the table.

She had always been beautiful. Slim and elegant. There was still nothing wrong with her appearance. Her thick hair was swept back from her face and up into a simple but classic arrangement. As usual, a stray lock of hair had escaped and fallen across her face. Her eyes were big and green, oceans in which the pupils were like desert islands. High cheekbones and full lips. In other words, she was a very attractive jailer.

Spencer suppressed a sigh. Because that was unfortunately exactly what she was, and had been these past thirty years. His jailer, the cross he had to bear.

He met her gaze and gave a start. His jailer was crying. Good grief, when had he last seen her cry? Five years ago when her father had his heart attack? Tough as old boots, he was over eighty-five now and still far too hale and hearty for Spencer to anticipate any brighter prospects. Though it was naïve, of course, to imagine that the old devil’s demise would bring him any kind of salvation. Fathers-in-law from hell always had a way of coming back.

‘You’ve got to keep me informed, Spencer,’ she said quietly. ‘You can’t just leave me outside.’

Spencer frowned and prepared to defend himself.

‘I’ve never kept anything from you,’ he said. ‘I told you about Fredrika and I told you about the baby.’

She gave a hollow laugh.

‘Good God, Spencer, you were out almost the whole weekend without telling me where you’d got to.’

I didn’t know you cared, he thought wearily.

Out loud he said, ‘It may have seemed like that, but it wasn’t how I meant it.’

He cleared his throat.

‘As I told you before, Fredrika hasn’t been well during her pregnancy, so…’

‘And how’s it going to be later on?’ Eva interrupted. ‘Have you thought about that? Are you going to have the baby alternate weekends or weeks, or what’s the plan? Will you be bringing it along when we go out to dinner with our friends, and if so, how are you going to introduce it?’

She shook her head and went to check the food in the oven.

‘I thought we’d talked about this,’ said Spencer, and could hear how feeble it sounded.

Eva slammed the oven door shut.

‘You may have talked about it,’ she said. ‘We haven’t.’

She paused before she went on.

‘If there is such a thing as we now.’

As he opened his mouth to reply, she waved her index finger at him to tell him to be quiet.

‘I’ve resigned myself to the fact that you and I have felt for a long time that we needed to have other partners for our own well-being,’ she said mutedly, and took a deep breath. ‘But for you to decide to go off and start a family with another woman…’

She clapped her hand to her mouth and for the first time for several years he felt the urge to hold her.

‘How could things turn out like this, Spencer?’ she wept. ‘How could we get trapped in this relationship where neither of us is happy and we can’t love each other?’

Her words hit home and his mouth went dry.

She clearly had no idea what her own father had done.

Do I need to care? thought Spencer. What could possibly be worse than this?

Fredrika Bergman wedged herself behind the steering wheel and set off for Danderyd Hospital. The case had been coming to the boil all weekend, and now it was Monday, it had positively exploded. Two more bodies, one directly linked to the deaths of the Reverend and Mrs Ahlbin. A suspected perpetrator who in Joar and Peder’s judgement was more to be seen as a star witness. A psychiatrist who was trying to convince the police his patient was incapable of taking his own life, though past experience showed how wrong his judgement had been on previous occasions. And two clergymen, Sven Ljung and Ragnar Vinterman, who both seemed to know Johanna Ahlbin but had presented them with entirely contradictory views of her.

Coming away from the Ljungs’ flat at the weekend, Fredrika and Alex compared notes, and found that Elsie had been by far the more forthcoming of the two. Sven had not said a word, for example, about their own son’s addiction and the fact that Karolina Ahlbin had been at his side for several years. Alex actually rang him later in the day to ask straight out why he had kept it from the police, and received the following reply: ‘Because I feel so ashamed of my failure as a parent. And now I feel even more ashamed because I’ve dragged Karolina’s name through the mud by not saying anything.’

Fredrika had found the name and contact details of their son, but had to lower her expectations when she saw that he was currently detained under the law in an institution for the treatment of addiction. According to Elsie he was in a clinic outside Stockholm, where he refused to cooperate with staff and had no contact with the outside world. It seemed that his latest overdose might have caused some brain damage, but the doctors could not be sure. Fredrika was obliged to rule him out as a potential star witness.

Danderyd Hospital was where Fredrika herself was to give birth later that spring, and she felt a frisson of excitement as she went in through the main entrance. The hospital smell promptly brought her down to earth again. What was it about care institutions that always smelled so off-putting? Almost as if death itself had crept into the ventilation system and was breathing on everybody in turn as they came in or out through the doors.

Fredrika’s mobile phone bleeped in her pocket, and she took it out. A message from her mother to say that she and Fredrika’s father had enjoyed meeting Spencer at the weekend.

Shamefaced, she slipped the phone back into her jacket pocket. Her mother was under no obligation to understand or accept her daughter’s lifestyle. But it was nice if she did, even so. Since the weekend everything had felt much simpler, but also infinitely more difficult. Her parents had not been wrong to question how she was actually going to manage on her own once the baby was born. Spencer would pull his weight financially, of course, but Fredrika knew she faced disappointment on the practical and emotional fronts. A man of almost sixty who had never been a father before was very likely not to be the stuff of which nests were built.

Fredrika had already spoken on the phone to Göran Ahlgren, the duty doctor when Karolina Ahlbin was admitted. Today he received her in his office. He was good-looking, Fredrika caught herself thinking, and found she was smiling a little too broadly. Unfortunately he returned a smile of the same sort and looked her up and down with his sharp, granite-blue eyes. She estimated him to be somewhere between fifty and fifty-five.

‘Karolina Ahlbin,’ she said, trying to sound businesslike to hide her initial flirtation. ‘You were here when she came into A&E.’

The doctor nodded.

‘Yes I was. But I’m afraid I have no information beyond what I told you on the phone.’

‘Some new facts have come to light which rather complicate matters,’ said Fredrika, frowning. ‘Far too many people who knew Karolina have been assuring us that she was never a drug addict in her whole life.’

Göran Ahlgren put up his hands.

‘I can only base my opinion on what I saw and documented myself,’ he said magnanimously. ‘And the case I was presented with was a young woman’s extremely ravaged body. Bearing all the wretched marks of long-term addiction.’

‘All right,’ said Fredrika, opening her handbag. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’

She took out two photographs.

‘Is this the woman who came in the ambulance and identified herself as Karolina Ahlbin’s sister?’

‘Yes,’ Göran Ahlgren confirmed without hesitation.

Relieved, Fredrika put the picture of Johanna Ahlbin back in her handbag.

‘And this one,’ she said, showing the other photo, ‘is this the addict who died of an overdose? Identified by her sister as Karolina Ahlbin?’

The doctor took the picture and recoiled.

‘Impossible,’ he mumbled.

‘Sorry?’ said Fredrika, trying not to show how expectant she felt.

Göran Ahlgren shook his head.

‘No,’ he said in bewilderment. ‘That is, I don’t know.’

‘What is it you don’t know?’ Fredrika asked abruptly, taking the photo as the doctor passed it back.

‘I mean I don’t feel sure, suddenly. The woman in the picture is quite like the one who died here, but…’

The doctor gave a sigh of resignation.

‘No, it’s not the same person,’ he admitted.

Fredrika’s grip on her notebook tightened.

‘Are you sure?’

‘No, I need to look into it in the course of the day. I’ve never experienced anything like it. We followed all the procedures that…’

Impatient and elated, Fredrika interrupted him.

‘The woman had no other injuries?’ she asked.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Any injuries that might point to an alternative cause of death?’

‘No,’ said the doctor. ‘I’ve seen the autopsy report and there are no anomalies that didn’t fit the normal pathology of this woman.’

‘Normal pathology.’ The phrase made Fredrika shudder.

‘But the concrete cause of death was a heroin overdose?’

‘Yes, to put it in simple terms.’

‘And she had injected herself with it in her flat?’

Göran Ahlgren stared at her.

‘I don’t know anything about that. All I know is that she arrived here by ambulance and that it was her sister who found her in the flat. Where she got the drugs wasn’t relevant for her treatment here.’

Fredrika knew that to be true, but the police officers who were called to the hospital should have taken an interest. It was their job, not the hospital’s, to establish whether there were any grounds for suspecting a crime. She wondered how much effort had actually been put into investigating the circumstances of Karolina’s death.

‘Could anyone else have injected her with the drugs?’ Fredrika asked mistrustfully.

‘Yes, that’s possible,’ Göran Ahlgren replied. ‘But why would anyone do that?’

Because she had to disappear.

Fredrika knew they had already lost far too much time.

‘I want a DNA test done on Karolina Ahlbin’s body. I want to be absolutely certain that she was the one who died here, ten days ago.’

‘I’ll see to that, of course,’ the doctor said swiftly. ‘But we need some DNA to compare it with.’

‘You can start by comparing her DNA with her parents’. That ought not to be too difficult: they’re all here under the same roof.’

Alex Recht gloomily noted that the rotten weather was continuing as he looked out of the window on his way to Norrmalm Police Station. It had proved an easy matter to locate the officer from that district who figured in the investigation of Jakob and Marja Ahlbin’s deaths. A few quick calls to the individual’s superior and he knew the person he wanted was at the station, writing a report.

‘Keep him there,’ said Alex. ‘I’m on my way.’

It was just a few steps from group HQ to the Norrmalm Police Station. They were in adjoining buildings and the glassed-in walkway linking them enabled him to move swiftly between the two worlds without taking a step outside.

Lena rang to say she was on her way home from work and wasn’t feeling well. Alex was worried, but also a bit irritated. Why was she making a habit these days of telling him some things and saying nothing at all about others? And what in heaven’s name was up with him? Saying nothing, day after day.

With an effort he put aside all thoughts of Lena. Now was now, and now meant work.

He found Viggo Tuvesson in his office, bent over his computer keyboard. Alex cleared his throat loudly and knocked on the door frame. It took the man a second to turn round, but when he did, and saw Alex, his face lit up into a smile as if he had just spotted a close friend he had not seen for a long time.

‘Alex Recht,’ he said, so loudly that it made Alex jump, unused as he was to hearing his whole name trumpeted like that. ‘To what do I owe the honour?’

Alex couldn’t help staring at the officer and wondering what crime his disfigurement was a punishment for. The scar ran through his top lip and up towards his nose, which was bent and buckled.

Good God, thought Alex. Why didn’t someone make a better job of fixing that?

Alex warily took a seat in Viggo Tuvesson’s visitor’s chair. With his legs crossed and his chin in his hand, the younger man definitely had ownership of the meeting. That much was clear from the outset, even though Alex was senior in rank.

Alex coughed again, attempting a trial of strength with the joyless but energetic eyes observing him with such fascination. Like a monster’s.

‘You were there when they found Jakob and Marja Ahlbin last week,’ he said in an authoritative tone, keen for the discussion to be on his terms.

‘Yes,’ said Viggo Tuvesson, looking expectant.

‘Had you met either of them when they were alive?’

The question seemed to take catch him off guard. The expectant look was replaced by one of surprise.

‘No, not that I recall.’

‘You hadn’t encountered either of them previously? In other contexts, I mean.’

‘Well, I’d read about the Reverend Ahlbin in the papers of course,’ he said slowly. ‘But as I say, I hadn’t met him personally.’

‘No, so you said,’ Alex said, equally slowly.

Viggo Tuvesson shifted position in his seat and banged his knee into the desk. The pain made him grimace.

‘I heard it was your group that got the case as a whole,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Alex, ‘it did. And that’s why I’m here.’

‘I’m very happy to help,’ said Viggo, smiling his weird smile again.

‘We’re very grateful,’ Alex said with an unnecessary nonchalance in his voice, and went on: ‘Tony Svensson, then. Do you know him?’

The policeman nodded.

‘If you mean the Tony Svensson who’s in Sons of the People, then yes, I know him.’

‘Can you tell me how?’

‘Because he’s done some of his business here on my patch. That was how our paths crossed.’

‘What sort of business?’

Viggo Tuvesson gave a laugh.

‘We suspected him and his lads of selling alcohol to minors at Odenplan, but we could never prove anything.’

Alex vaguely recalled having heard about the matter before.

‘Did you bring him in for questioning?’

‘Oh yes, but he kept his trap firmly shut. Seemed to be having a laugh with us. Very clever, actually. Impressively well up on all the legal stuff. Knows exactly what he can get away with, so to speak.’

Like he did with the emails, thought Alex. Knew exactly how to word them so it would be hard to call them actual threats.

‘When was this?’ he asked.

Viggo Tuvesson shrugged.

‘Hard to remember exactly, but I can check if you like. About a year ago, I’d say.’

Alex gave a thoughtful nod. That fitted with what he already knew.

‘And since then? Have you had any further contact with him, I mean?’

Again they looked at each other, searching for hidden facts in each other’s eyes.

‘Yes,’ said Viggo. ‘He rang me a couple of times at work.’

‘And what did he want, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Wanted to grass on a former member of his network, some guy who wanted to go solo on a heist. Good old Tony evidently found that hard to accept.’

Viggo Tuvesson kept his hands in his lap.

‘I gather Tony Svensson’s cropped up in the Ahlbin investigation as well.’

‘That’s right,’ said Alex. ‘That was why I wanted to check if you had anything in particular on him.’

It was a clumsy, transparent excuse. It was obvious to anyone that Alex had sought out Viggo Tuvesson to try to find out what contact there had been between them. But Viggo let it pass.

‘I promise to get back to you if anything turns up. Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s all I’ve got for now.’

‘That’s how it goes sometimes,’ said Alex, getting up. ‘Thanks for your time.’

He shook hands with Viggo Tuvesson and headed for the lift that would take him back down to the walkway. It wasn’t just that he was disappointed with what Viggo had had to say. According to Ronny Berg when Peder talked to him, it was Jakob Ahlbin and not Tony Svensson who tipped off the police about his plans for a coup. There had been no mention of a Viggo in that context.

Alex took out his mobile and rang Peder.

‘How are you two getting on? Have you let Tony Svensson go yet, or am I in time to ask him one more thing?’

When Fredrika got back from the hospital. Alex decided the two of them ought to pay a visit to Muhammad Abdullah’s widow out at Skärholmen.

‘Do you think she’ll want to see us?’ Fredrika asked uneasily. ‘She might be blaming us for her husband’s death.’

‘But it still feels like the right thing to do,’ said Alex. ‘And I’d be glad to have you with me, since you were there last time.’

For the second time in just a few days, they set off to Skärholmen. Alex felt under pressure.

‘Good idea to ask for that DNA sample,’ he said. ‘When do we get the preliminary result?’

‘We should know by this evening whether the dead woman was related to the Ahlbin couple, and that should really be all we need. If not, we’ll have to try to find some of Karolina’s DNA in her flat, so they’ve got something to match to their test sample. But I think we can be pretty sure the tests will prove it wasn’t Karolina who died.’

‘That’ll put the cat among the pigeons,’ Alex muttered.

‘I found the officers who went to the hospital at the time of Karolina’s death. They didn’t see any reason to mistrust her sister’s statement, so all they did was speak to the nursing staff and the ambulance crew. Since the autopsy didn’t show up anything odd, they didn’t pursue the matter.’

This was a highly questionable statement in many ways, as Alex and Fredrika both knew. It exasperated them that such a vital detail in the case had passed so many people by.

‘We need to issue their descriptions, both of them,’ said Fredrika, meaning Karolina and Johanna Ahlbin. ‘We know it was Johanna who came with the woman in the ambulance, and if she deliberately misidentified a stranger as her dead sister, then she’s got some explaining to do in this murder enquiry.’

Alex smiled.

‘And what’s our justification for issuing Karolina’s description?’

Fredrika laughed.

‘We’re worried about her?’

Alex found that he was laughing, too. For as long as there was such friction between Peder and Joar and for as long as Fredrika seemed stable and not desperately short of sleep, he preferred her company to the men’s. Maybe he was imagining it, but her pregnancy seemed to have brought a degree of harmony with it. Or perhaps it was just that she had too many other things to think about to be quite as spiky in the office.

Alex’s mobile rang. It was Peder.

‘Tony Svensson got very worked up when I confronted him with that new information,’ he blurted out. ‘He said he hadn’t fucking well rung any copper to grass up Ronny Berg.’

‘And you believe him?’ asked Alex, on tenterhooks.

‘Oh yes,’ came Peder’s reply. ‘But that doesn’t rule out them being in contact for some other reason.’

‘They did have contact, that’s for sure,’ said Alex. ‘Did you give him Viggo Tuvesson’s name? Ask if he knew him?’

‘No,’ said Peder. ‘I didn’t see there was any need to give away the name at present, while we know somebody’s threatening Tony, and don’t know what this Viggo is up to. I just asked if he had any contacts in the city police and he said he didn’t. Not in the Norrmalm district or anywhere else.’

‘Excellent,’ said Alex. ‘Excellent.’

He ended the call and turned to Fredrika.

‘Bother. It looks as if that cop is mixed up in something shady after all.’

Fredrika had been right: Muhammad Abdullah’s wife was not at all happy about their visit. This time there was no tea and biscuits, and the flat was full of people when they got there. It took Fredrika several minutes of diplomatic groundwork before the woman agreed to speak to them briefly in the kitchen, just the three of them.

Her body language signalled nothing but mistrust and animosity as she sat down at the kitchen table. Fredrika could see she had been crying, but she remained composed throughout the interview.

‘I told him to be careful, and not to talk to you,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘But he wouldn’t listen.’

‘What made you think he needed to be careful?’ Fredrika cautiously asked.

‘Yusuf never got here,’ she said, presumably referring to the man run over at the university. ‘We waited and waited but he never got in touch. Then I knew, I just knew there was something wrong with the so-called network that helped him get over here.’

‘Your husband had his own contacts for that sort of thing, didn’t he?’ Alex gently prompted.

‘Contacts, yes, but he was never part of the organisation himself,’ the widow said adamantly. ‘It would have been far too risky.’

‘Did he talk to any of his contacts about the new network?’ Fredrika asked.

The widow shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Never. Yusuf had told us it all had to be very secret. So when he went missing, we were really worried.’

‘Did you or your husband ever receive threats of any kind?’ asked Alex.

‘No,’ the widow said quietly. ‘Not as far as I know, anyway.’

Alex thought about this. Jakob Ahlbin was sent threats before he was murdered, and someone had perhaps even tried to bargain with him. But Muhammad Abdullah was shot practically on the open street, with no warning.

‘I’ve been through my husband’s emails and post,’ said the widow. ‘I didn’t find anything there.’

‘And his mobile?’

She shook her head.

‘He had it with him when he went out and I haven’t seen it since.’

This made Fredrika and Alex feel uneasy, because the police had not found a mobile on Muhammad Abdullah when they searched the body.

‘What made him go out last night?’ asked Fredrika.

‘Muhammad got a phone call,’ the widow said. ‘When we were watching TV. It only lasted about thirty seconds and then he said he had to go out and see to something.’

‘Did he tell you who had rung?’

‘No, but it wasn’t unusual. Sometimes one of his contacts would ring and he’d have to go and see them at short notice. I never asked about it. For the children’s sake it seemed better for only one of us to be involved.’

Fredrika could sympathise with that. But it did not bode well that the mobile had vanished. They could always look at the pattern of calls to and from that number, of course, but without the phone itself there was no way of telling if he had received messages or threats by text.

‘And when did you realise something was wrong?’

‘After a couple of hours. He wasn’t usually gone that long when he went to see his contacts.’

‘And you rang the police?’

‘Yes, but he hadn’t been gone long enough for them to take any action, they said. So after ten I went out to see if he’d taken the car when he went out, or gone on foot…’

Her voice fell away and she swallowed hard, several times.

‘But you didn’t find him?’ Fredrika said gently.

The widow shook her head.

‘But I must have been out there just about the time he died.’

As she went on, her words inflicted almost physical pain on them:

‘I was there when they found him this morning. He was lying face down in the snow. The first thought that came into my head was that he’d catch cold if he stayed there like that.’

The woman’s dark eyes were glittering with tears but she did not cry. Grief had so many faces and expressed itself in so many different ways. Sometimes it even made people beautiful.

Peder Rydh went over and over his notes from his latest interview with Tony Svensson. Thoughts came and went like stray guests in his head.

It seemed incontrovertible that Tony Svensson and Sons of the People had had a major clash with Jakob Ahlbin. It seemed equally clear that that conflict had been resolved, and that the person in dispute with Jakob Ahlbin when he died was Ronny Berg, now in Kronoberg Prison. But Ronny Berg had an alibi for the time of the double murder, which meant that, if he was behind it, he must have hired someone to carry it out. And that did not sound very plausible.

In parallel he had to consider the anomalies surrounding Karolina Ahlbin’s death, the alleged trigger for an act of desperation on the part of her father. What the hell would their next step be if it turned out not to be Karolina who had died?

Peder racked his brains. The group had made certain basic assumptions. For example, the fact that the threats sent to Jakob Ahlbin from the Sons of the People email account from computers other than Tony Svensson’s had a direct link to his subsequent murder.

But need that be the case? wondered Peder. Maybe it was a red herring.

The third one in a row, if so. It wasn’t suicide and it wasn’t Tony Svensson and the SP. And maybe it wasn’t the mystery emailer, either.

But that couldn’t be right. It must all hang together, even if for the time being it was impossible to see how.

Fredrika had drawn her colleagues’ attention to the fact that the mystery emailer seemed to know his Bible, and well enough to use it to make allusions that would provoke the recipient.

So could there be a link to the Church?

Peder had a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. And what about the man run over outside the university who was now, via the murdered Muhammad Abdullah, tenuously linked to the Ahlbin murder case as well? How did he fit into the picture?

Alex had given Peder and Joar a quick account of Fredrika’s latest idea. Her theory that the victims were being silenced so they would not reveal a highly sensitive secret. A classic motive, but Peder could not for the life of him see what secret could be so big that it was worth murdering several people for.

He decided to backtrack a little. He could hear Joar out in the corridor, talking in a warm voice to someone he was clearly on very close terms with. Peder pressed his fingers to his temples, trying to keep his thoughts in check. If he let himself think about Pia Nordh now, all would be lost. He stared intently at his notes from the last Tony Svensson interview.

One phrase leapt out at him.

‘It’s not somebody like me you’re looking for, you fucking numbskulls.’

The words had been Tony’s response to Peder and Joar’s suggestion that he look at some police pictures to pick out the person who had forced him into the conspiracy against Jakob Ahlbin. What was he getting at? Peder’s pulse started to race. Tony was intimating that the police would not have a picture of that person on file because he was not a known criminal, unlike Tony himself. The words ‘not somebody like me’ took on a different significance if you let your imagination range more freely. Not somebody like me… but somebody like you. Was that what he was hinting at? So a police officer did figure in this investigation after all.

And various clergymen.

It was hard to think of categories of people who had less in common with Tony Svensson than those two.

Peder brought up the telephone lists on his computer screen. Tony Svensson had indeed rung Viggo Tuvesson, on three occasions, but had never been rung by him. Not on that phone, anyway. What was more, all three calls were made after Tony Svensson stopped emailing Jakob Ahlbin and someone else took over. Peder brought up more lists, this time Tony Svensson’s overall call log. Had he been rung from some other number in the crucial period that they could link to Viggo Tuvesson?

The group’s administrator had done sterling work and identified the most frequently occurring numbers. But there were also lots of calls from mobiles with unregistered pay-as-you-go accounts, and it was impossible to say who owned or was using them. Tony Svensson had been contacted from fifteen such numbers in the past month. Maybe one of them belonged to the man – or woman – who had approached him and forced him into the role of double dealer? Maybe a policeman, or maybe a vicar. Someone who was not like Tony Svensson.

Peder closed the Excel files of phone numbers. He would have to start all over again and take a fresh approach. Just then, Joar knocked at his door. Peder did not say a word, but glared as crossly as he could.

‘Surveillance rang,’ Joar said curtly. ‘We were right: Tony Svensson’s daughter’s as free as a bird. He went straight round to her school.’

‘Good,’ said Peder, equally curtly.

‘And he made two calls when he was with his daughter.’

Peder was in suspense.

‘One was to the girl’s mother, his ex, and the other was to an unregistered mobile.’

Peder sighed. What had he expected?

‘But we were at least able to tell roughly where the owner of the phone was when he took the call, and the record of calls and connections to phone masts told us where he’d spent his day.’

‘And where was that?’ asked Peder, on the edge of his seat.

‘Here in Kungsholmen. In the area of, or indeed in, the Kronoberg block.’

‘In Norrmalm Police Station, for example?’

Joar smiled.

‘Hard to say, but yes, maybe even there.’

On the way back from Skärholmen, Fredrika Bergman had an idea.

‘Could we go out to Ekerö and have a look at the daughters’ house?’

‘Why?’ asked Alex with a look of surprise.

‘Because I haven’t had a chance to see it yet,’ was Fredrika’s simple answer. ‘And I think it would help me to understand Karolina and Johanna better.’

‘So you feel sure both of them are implicated in the murder of their parents?’ Alex asked curiously.

Fredrika put both hands on her stomach.

‘Perhaps,’ was all she said.

Alex rang the prosecutor and got verbal permission to make a follow-up visit to the house, so they went via HQ to pick up the copy of the house key that the technical boys had made since the last visit. Half an hour later, they pulled up outside the house.

Alex frowned as they got out of the car.

‘Somebody’s been here,’ he said, pointing to parallel tyre tracks in the snow, which was just beginning to thaw.

‘Aren’t they the ones you made last time you were here?’ Fredrika asked.

‘No, they’re from a different car,’ said Alex, starting to take pictures of the tracks with the camera in his mobile phone.

Fredrika looked around her, breathing in the cool air and appreciating the silence.

‘It’s a lovely place,’ she said out loud.

‘No doubt it was even nicer before,’ said Alex, putting his phone away. ‘There used to be a meadow here,’ he said, pointing to the neighbouring property. ‘But the local council sold it off for development, of course.’

‘A meadow,’ repeated Fredrika, and a dreamy look came into her eyes. ‘Must have been pretty idyllic, growing up here.’

Alex went ahead of her to the house. The snow was compacted under his feet. The lock grated when he turned the key and the door made a faint protest as he opened it.

‘Well here we are, do come in,’ he said to Fredrika, standing aside to let her go first.

It was always fascinating to come into someone else’s home. Fredrika had been along on a number of house searches and often found herself starting to fantasise about the people who lived in the house or apartment. Whether they were happy or unhappy, poor or rich. Sadly enough, the reason for the police being there was often all too obvious to see. The home sent out signals of misery or social exclusion, and the dust lay thick on every surface.

The Ahlbin sisters’ house was not one of those. It felt homely and welcoming, even though it was clearly only a holiday place. Alex seemed busy with something in the kitchen, so Fredrika took a tour of the rooms, first downstairs and then upstairs. All the beds were made up, but under the heavy bedspreads the sheets smelled of damp. The wardrobes were empty apart from a few items of casual wear, all in Jakob Ahlbin’s size. The rooms were tastefully uncluttered but the furnishings still managed to be personal. Fredrika’s eye came to rest on a pressed flower in a frame, hanging on the wall. She had to go closer to see it properly. A pressed daisy, so old and brittle that it looked as though it might disintegrate any moment. All alone on an otherwise bare wall.

I wonder why? thought Fredrika, moving on to the next room.

She looked at all the family photos hanging on the walls and standing on chests of drawers, and all the toys and children’s shoes that must have belonged to the girls when they were little. Just as her male colleagues had done, she noted Johanna Ahlbin’s disappearance from the pictures. She was in them, and then suddenly she wasn’t.

Was it symbolic? she asked herself. Did Johanna come to be seen as a less important part of the family? And if so, why? Or was it she who broke with the rest of them?

Fredrika started going through the pictures systematically. First the upstairs ones and then those on the ground floor. She took down the frames, opened them and checked the back of each photo for any dates or annotations. She was pleased to see that whoever framed the pictures had been very methodical, identifying virtually all of them.

‘Jakob, Marja, Karolina and Johanna, autumn ’85.’

‘Jakob and Johanna laying up the boat for the winter, ’89.’

‘Marja and Karolina when the well froze, ’86.’

Fredrika was so engrossed in the operation that she did not hear Alex come up behind her.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, making her jump.

‘Look,’ she said, holding out one of the photos. ‘Someone’s dated them all.’

Alex followed her long, agile fingers with fascination as she silently opened up frame after frame. When she had finished, it was impossible to tell that every frame had been taken down, opened and then put back together again.

‘In 1992, something changes,’ she said with conviction, clapping her hands to get the dust off.

She pointed to one of the photos.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘The family celebrating midsummer 1992. It seems to have been the last midsummer they were all here.’

She waved a hand along the top row of pictures.

‘They were here every year from the time Karolina was born. It seems to have been just them, nobody else. Just Jakob, Marja and the girls.’

Alex took down the 1992 picture with a thoughtful expression.

‘According to Elsie and Sven Ljung, this was about the time Jakob stopped hiding the refugees,’ he said.

‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Fredrika. ‘But we weren’t really told why.’

‘No,’ said Alex, hanging the picture back on the wall.

His pregnant colleague raised her magic finger again and pointed.

‘This is the other time,’ she said. ‘The other one Elsie mentioned.’

Alex looked at the picture.

‘It’s the last picture Johanna’s in, taken in 2004 which just fits. A family barbecue in the garden.’

‘What happened in 2004?’ asked Alex.

‘That was when Jakob Ahlbin started talking about going back to hiding refugees. Which apparently upset Johanna a great deal. And then Sven and Jakob fell out after Sven suggested Jakob could make some money out of the operation.’

‘Christ,’ muttered Alex. ‘Capitalising on human misery, what the hell made him think that was such a great idea?’

The pine floor creaked beneath their feet as they moved to and fro along the wall.

‘This was where it started, with his refugees in the basement,’ Alex said with a lump in his throat. ‘I just can’t get my head round how, though.’

Fredrika shivered.

‘We’ve simply got to find Johanna Ahlbin now,’ she said. ‘It feels to me as if time’s running out.’

‘I feel the same,’ Alex said grimly. ‘As if we’re heading for a bloody meltdown and can’t lift a finger to save the situation.’

Fredrika did up her jacket, which she had left undone while they were going round the house.

‘But at least we know now when it all started,’ she said. ‘This was where the Ahlbin family fell apart and this was where someone came to get the murder weapon. It all started here, in 1992.’

Daylight was fading by the time Alex and Fredrika got back to Kungsholmen. Alex often thought how senseless it was that it got dark in the middle of the afternoon for large parts of the year. And then never got dark in the summer. There was no moderation at these latitudes, he thought.

He called his group together for a quick update before they all went home. Fredrika had to slip straight out again to take a call.

‘If nobody has any objections I’d like to start by declaring the right-wing extremist angle defunct, and dropping it,’ he began.

Nobody objected.

‘The only thing of value we’ve learnt about the extremists and the threats from Tony Svensson and Sons of the People is that they came to someone else’s attention, and that person then exploited the dispute between SP and Jakob Ahlbin to conceal his own crime,’ Alex concluded.

He was about to go on when the door burst open and Fredrika came in with a look of triumph.

‘Tell us then,’ said Alex.

Peder pulled out a chair for Fredrika to sit on, keen to have her on his side of the table rather than Joar’s. Joar pulled a face and Alex suppressed a sigh.

‘A simple blood test proved that the woman, the drug addict, can’t possibly be related to Marja and Jakob.’

‘Well, well…’ began Peder.

‘Which at least in theory rules out her being Karolina Ahlbin. I mean, she could be adopted or something. Not that it’s likely, but the hospital wanted to make sure it had covered itself this time. So they did what they should have done from the word go: asked for copies of her dental records. And no – the woman wasn’t Karolina Ahlbin.’

‘Bloody incredible,’ said Joar, tossing his pen onto the table.

Alex looked in his direction. He could not recall having heard him swear before. Peder sent him a look too, but not a sharp one.

He’s already seen that side of him, thought Alex. I’m the one not keeping up.

Peder’s mobile rang and he hastily switched it off.

‘My brother,’ he said. ‘He’s been ringing all day, he just keeps on.’

‘If you want a word with him do feel free to pop out,’ said Alex, who was aware of Jimmy’s situation but kept it to himself.

Peder shook his head firmly.

‘Then we know for sure that Karolina’s sister deliberately identified another woman as her sister,’ Alex said. ‘But we haven’t heard from Karolina despite the fact that the news of her parents’ deaths is splashed all over the newspapers.’

He paused.

‘So what does that tell us?’

‘Either she’s dead, or for some reason she can’t get in touch. Maybe she’s being held somewhere, against her will?’ said Peder.

‘Or she’s in on the conspiracy,’ said Joar.

Fredrika cleared her throat.

‘There’s got to be some reason for her to go along with being declared dead, as it were. We’ve been to her flat and it looks as if it’s been standing empty for weeks.’

‘But wasn’t she missed at work?’ queried Ellen, who seldom said anything at the meetings.

‘She’s a freelance journalist,’ replied Fredrika. ‘Or trying to be. She wasn’t doing very well out of it financially, if her latest tax return’s anything to go by. Which ties in quite well with the profile of her as a drug addict, incidentally.’

‘Be that as it may, someone’s gone to a lot of trouble – with or without her consent – to build up a story round her death,’ observed Joar. ‘But why?’

‘To make the next death, that is, the Ahlbins’ so-called suicide, more plausible,’ suggested Peder.

‘Or to kill two birds with one stone?’ said Fredrika, brain-storming. ‘If we go back to our working hypothesis that Jakob was murdered to keep him quiet, maybe there was good reason to keep Karolina quiet, too. Various informants have told us how close she was to her father.’

Alex sighed and kneaded his face with his hands.

‘But why Marja?’

Nobody responded.

‘Why do you also kill the wife of the man you’re trying to silence? And the argument that the murderer was taken by surprise to find her at home doesn’t hold water, because he could just have taken care of Jakob some other time.’

‘Maybe it was urgent?’ Peder said. ‘And if you want it to look like suicide, there aren’t that many places besides the victim’s own home to choose from.’

‘What about the suicide note?’ asked Fredrika. ‘How did it look? Do we think it was written in advance, or what?’

‘It was printed out from Jakob’s computer,’ replied Joar. ‘The document had been saved onto the hard disk and it was dated the same day, and saved at about the time of the murder, according to the computer.’

‘Let’s sketch ourselves a profile of the murderer,’ said Alex with a degree of excitement in his voice. ‘Someone stages the Karolina death on the Thursday. Someone goes out to Ekerö and gets into the house unnoticed to fetch the murder weapon. Someone goes round to Jakob and Marja’s flat on the Tuesday with a plan all worked out, and shoots them both in the head after first forcing Jakob to sign his own suicide note. What conclusions can we draw from all that?’

Before anyone could say anything, he started answering his own question:

‘One. The murderer knows the Ahlbin family extremely well. Two. The murderer has some level of access to the Ahlbins’ flat and their daughters’ house; he’s patently been able to get into both without any visible damage to the front doors, and it’s only in the latter case that someone could have let him or her in voluntarily. Three.’

Alex paused.

‘Three. The murderer must have known the family for some time, since he or she was able to play on both Jakob’s state of health and the fact that Karolina was the daughter he was closest to.’

He stopped.

‘Four,’ said Fredrika. ‘The murderer thought – or at least had reason to think – that Karolina Ahlbin wouldn’t come forward and reveal that she wasn’t really dead.’

The others looked at her.

‘Quite right,’ Alex said slowly, with a nod of approval, but Peder just looked confused.

‘Why didn’t they just kill her?’ queried Alex. ‘If it was vital for her to disappear, and I think we can assume it was, why not get her out of the way permanently?’

Fredrika went pale.

‘Maybe they did. Maybe that’s why we haven’t heard from her.’

Joar shook his head.

‘No, that doesn’t make sense. Why go to the bother of killing her twice? Why not do away with her straight away and then use her actual death to explain why Jakob killed his wife and then himself? To my way of thinking, it seems much more plausible that she was in on the plot.’

‘Because there was no opportunity, or because she’s part of the set-up,’ Alex declared. ‘Nothing else fits.’

‘In view of her good relations with her father,’ said Fredrika with her head on one side and a hand resting on her stomach, ‘perhaps the most likely answer is that they couldn’t get hold of her when they needed to kill her.’

‘True,’ said Alex. ‘But that still leaves us with the question: where was she then, and where is she now? Have we talked to many of her friends?’

‘We haven’t had time yet,’ said Peder, sounding tired. ‘We haven’t been treating it as a priority, because we thought she was dead, plain and simple. And it’s been quite hard to track them down; we haven’t had access to her phone records or emails. And she’s got no formal place of work, either, has she?’

‘If we tell the media we’re looking for her and issue a description, we’re going to look like idiots,’ said Alex, thinking hard about what best to do next. ‘But I wouldn’t mind betting it’ll leak out anyway.’

‘Not if we keep a tight lid on things,’ objected Joar.

‘If it doesn’t leak out from here, it will from the hospital,’ Alex said wryly. ‘There’s not a chance it won’t be out by the end of the evening.’

Fredrika leant forward.

‘So let’s pre-empt them,’ she said.

‘How?’

‘We hold a press conference,’ she said. ‘Then we’re first with the news. Classic media logic. If you want ownership of how a story’s presented and followed up, you have to be the one to break it.’

Alex looked in Ellen’s direction. It was going to be a long working day.

‘Can you get together with the information department and write a press release? Meanwhile, I’ll try to get some support for this among the higher echelons.’

He looked at his watch again.

‘Say we’ll hold it two hours from now, at six. Until then let’s all try to make sure nothing leaks out.’

Media training was evidently increasingly popular these days, but any opportunities of that kind had unfortunately passed Alex Recht by. So he felt pretty lost when he took his place on the platform for the meeting with the press.

He made a short statement of which the gist was: the police had received new information to prove beyond doubt that it was not Jakob and Marja Ahlbin’s daughter who had died the Thursday before they were found shot dead in their flat. It would therefore be appreciated if anyone with any information about the current whereabouts of either Karolina or Johanna Ahlbin could come forward. Neither of them was suspected of any crime; the police merely wanted their help in order to reach a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding their parents’ deaths.

‘But what about Johanna?’ asked one of the reporters. ‘How can you not suspect her of any crime? She must have known it wasn’t her sister that she came to hospital with and identified.’

Alex took a sip of water even though he was not in the least thirsty.

‘That’s just the kind of point we need the opportunity to clarify,’ he said, trying to sound authoritative. ‘We need to know exactly what the circumstances were that led to an unknown woman being identified as Karolina Ahlbin a week ago.’

Fredrika was standing right at the back, observing her boss throughout the short press conference. On the whole she thought he made a pretty good job of it.

Just as Alex was winding up the conference, her mobile vibrated in her jacket pocket. She quickly left the room so she could speak undisturbed.

A faint hope of it being Spencer crept over her from nowhere. They had not been in touch with each other that day and she was missing him.

To hell with that, she thought wearily. Missing Spencer was like wishing for a white Christmas. If it happens, it happens, but it’s not worth getting your hopes up.

When she was able to answer the phone, it wasn’t Spencer, of course, but a colleague from the national CID. He introduced himself as one of the investigators working on the series of security van robberies to which the man Yusuf, run over at the university, could be linked.

‘We’ve found something that I thought you’d like to know about,’ he said.

Fredrika was all ears.

‘When the case came to us we did another scene-of-crime investigation,’ he said, ‘and we found a mobile phone with the dead man’s prints on. It was almost twenty-five metres from the body, so it was probably flung out of his jacket pocket when the car initially rammed into him.’

There was a crackle on the line; reception was not very good just where Fredrika happened to be standing.

‘We took all the information off it and got hold of details of the calls made to and from it, from the phone company. It had only been used a few times, and in all cases the incoming calls were from unregistered pay-as-you-go accounts.’

‘Yes?’

There was a sound of paper rustling.

‘Sven Ljung,’ he said eventually.

‘Sven Ljung?’ Fredrika echoed in astonishment.

‘Yes, he’s the listed subscriber to the phone which the hit-and-run victim’s mobile had been in touch with. It was Ljung he rang; two short calls.’

Fredrika was thinking furiously, trying to fathom how it all fitted together.

‘When were these calls to Sven Ljung made?’

‘Two days before the robbery was committed.’

Fredrika took a deep breath. The circle appeared to be closing, but she still did not understand what she had in front of her.

‘Oh, there’s one other thing,’ said the detective. ‘We were able to secure traces of metallic silver paint on the victim’s clothes, which also happens to be the colour of Sven Ljung’s Mercedes.’

‘Have you been able to match them?’ asked Fredrika, suddenly unsure what was technically possible.

‘We thought about that – it isn’t necessarily significant, there are loads of cars that colour, but when we discovered Sven Ljung had reported his car stolen the evening before the murder took place, we thought it was all getting more interesting.’

Thoughts were whirring round in Fredrika’s head and anything to do with Spencer found itself relegated to a kind of mental waiting room.

‘Have you spoken to him? Sven Ljung, that is?’ she asked, her voice husky with suspense.

‘Not yet, but we’re working on it,’ replied the detective.

They had a few more exchanges about the likelihood of Sven Ljung being an accessory to the hit-and-run murder, and thus possibly also the murder of Jakob and Marja. Then they ended the call and Fredrika pocketed her phone.

People came crowding out of the room she had just left. The press conference was clearly over. Then her phone rang again.

Spencer, thought Fredrika automatically.

She was wrong again.

‘This is very peculiar,’ said her contact in the technical division. ‘I checked Jakob Ahlbin’s emails again and he had one from his daughter, several days after she died. As if she was still alive.’

Fredrika gripped her phone tightly.

‘From which daughter?’ she asked, quietly so none of the reporters would hear what she was saying.

‘From Karolina,’ said the technician, sounding baffled. ‘But she’s dead, isn’t she?’

Fredrika ignored his objection.

‘Can you read me out the email, please?’ she said.

‘Dad, sorry to have to tell you this by email, but I get no answer when I try ringing your mobile. It’s all a complete disaster here. Stuck in Bangkok in a terrible fix. Need help right away. Please answer as soon as you get this! Love, Karolina.’

Bangkok. So it was Karolina who tried to ring her mother. Fredrika felt tears coming into her eyes.

‘So she didn’t know,’ she whispered, mainly to herself.

‘Hello?’ the technician broke in. ‘It can’t have been Karolina who sent the email, can it? Because she’s dead.’

In Fredrika’s head there was only one answer to his question:

‘Lazarus.’

BANGKOK, THAILAND

Still oblivious of her own death and resurrection, Karolina Ahlbin boarded a flight from Bangkok to Stockholm later that evening. Paralysed by the belief that she was returning to her home city to bury her entire family, she was scarcely able to feel the pressure of the situation facing her. According to the smuggler, a nationwide alert had been issued and her picture had been in all the Thai newspapers. So she could not leave the flat and had to resign herself to being cut off from the flow of news about the murder of her parents and sister in Sweden.

Her ally, the people smuggler, had worked fast since she asked him for help. But he freely admitted that it was a tricky challenge. His usual modus operandi when helping migrants get from Bangkok to Sweden was to get hold of the passport of an individual as similar in appearance to the migrant as possible. If the migrant travelled in possession of a genuine passport indicating citizenship of an EU country, there was nothing to prevent them entering Europe.

The fact that there was a widespread trade in passports was not much help to Karolina’s smuggler. The passports he was able to buy on the second-hand market were those not of Swedish citizens with blond hair and blue eyes but of people originally from other countries. So when Karolina sought him out in desperation and begged for a way of leaving Thailand ‘in the next few days’, he was faced with a problem. After a few hours of brooding, the smuggler decided the only thing to do was to identify a Swedish tourist who looked vaguely like Karolina and then steal her passport.

She scrutinised the picture suspiciously when he handed her the passport.

‘You can’t leave the country except in disguise, anyway,’ the smuggler assured her when he saw how downcast she looked. ‘They’ll be on the look-out at the airport for you and anyone else wanted by the police. Change your hairstyle and colour, and get some new glasses. At least then you’ll have a shadow of a chance.’

As mechanically as if she were a clockwork toy, she took the steps he suggested. Cut her hair short and dyed it. Then she sat apathetically on the edge of the bed for hours. Now she had even lost her own appearance. And she still did not know why.

An hour later she was at the airport with the stolen passport in her pocket, feeling her pulse rate rise as she approached security and passport control. The airport was crawling with uniformed police and Karolina had to make a real effort to avoid eye contact with any of them. When she was finally waiting at her gate, her pulse slowed a bit at last and sorrow washed over her again.

I’ve lost everything, she thought emptily. My identity and my life, my freedom. And above all – my family. I’ve nothing and nobody to go home to. May the Devil take whoever did this.

Sinking into her airline seat half an hour later and fastening her seatbelt, she felt too exhausted even to cry. Her escape had become cold and mute.

And she was beyond all salvation.

I have become a non-person. I have become the sort of person who feels nothing.

She leant her head on the backrest and thought one last thought before sleep claimed her: God help me when I find out who did this. Because I can’t be answerable for what I might do.

At another airport in a different part of the world, considerably nearer to Sweden, Johanna Ahlbin prepared to board a plane home to Stockholm, unaware that her sister was heading to the same destination on a different plane.

Her yearning for home intensified when she shut her eyes and pictured her beloved. The one who was always at her side, the one who had sworn never to leave her. He thought he was the stronger of the two of them, but in fact he was exactly as inferior as he had to be.

Her love for him was strong and solid, in spite of everything.

The only man she had ever let near her, the only one scarred enough to keep her secret without being terrified by it.

My darling prince of peace, she thought.

And she reached a decision, just as she heard the loudspeakers announce that all passengers were to fasten their safety belts and switch off their mobile phones.

She would ring the police straight away and tell them she was on her way home. Once through to the switchboard, she asked for the man who had spoken at the press conference she had seen on TV earlier in the day.

‘Alex Recht,’ she said. ‘Can you put me through to him at once? My name is Johanna Ahlbin. I think he’s been waiting for my call.’