Silenced

FRIDAY 29 FEBRUARY 2008

STOCKHOLM

It was morning and the flat was freezing cold. The smell of cigarette smoke was not as overpowering as before because they had mended the fan for him and given him the key to one of the little windows. It was almost lunchtime, but Ali did not feel like getting up. The bag stood on the floor at the foot of the bed, a grim and blatant reminder of his new reality.

He still did not know who to curse for his misfortune. Perhaps his parents for bringing him into the world in a country like Iraq. Perhaps the American president who everybody loved to hate and who had toppled the great leader Saddam and then abandoned the people when the country collapsed. Or perhaps Europe, which refused to let him in on any terms other than those with which he was now faced.

Whichever way he looked at it, he could not see that it was his fault. He had neither started the damn war nor made himself unemployed and defenceless. All he had done was shoulder his responsibility like a decent husband and father.

His wife must be wondering where he was. And his friend, who had still not heard from him, must be wondering too. He turned his eyes towards the cold window. His friend must be out there somewhere. In a city he did not know, in a land where he was a complete stranger. They would make a new start there, he and his family. It was for their sakes he was going to carry out his task on Sunday. He would never do anything like that ever again. For as long as he lived.

‘There are some basic rules, my lad,’ his father had said when he was a child. ‘You don’t fight and you don’t steal. Simple, eh?’

His father had died by the time Iraq collapsed as a state and a nation, and everyday life turned to chaos. Perhaps even he would have understood that it had now become impossible to stick to the rules. Not because things were better before, but because things had been calmer and ostensibly safer. But only ostensibly. Many people knew how it felt to hear the cars pull up in front of your house early in the morning and have your private home violated and invaded by unknown armed men sent by the government to bring in a citizen for interrogation. Some of them were never heard of again. Others were returned to their families in a state that bore witness to such appalling atrocities that even their closest family had no words for them.

Iraq was different now. The unforeseen violence came from another direction and created even greater insecurity. Money had grown important in a way it had not been before, and suddenly kidnapping was part of daily life, along with theft and arson and armed robbery.

Was that the sort of person he had turned into, as well? With a bag containing a gun and a balaclava beside his bed, there was every justification for the comparison.

We couldn’t go on, thought Ali. Forgive me, Father, for what I’m going to do, but we couldn’t go on.

Then he reached out a trembling hand for his eighth cigarette of the day. Soon it would all be over and a better future would be secured.

BANGKOK, THAILAND

The Swedish Embassy opened at ten and she was there waiting. It had been a long and wretched night. In the end she had had to check into a cheap youth hostel on the outskirts of Bangkok and had spent the night anxiously awake. The money she had with her, what little the mugger had not taken, was not enough to pay her bill. She asked the man at reception where the nearest cashpoint machine was and implied she would soon be back with a handful of notes. He told her it was three blocks away, and she was able to leave the hostel without creating a scene.

The Embassy was housed in a tall building just next to the Landmark Hotel on Sukhumvit, occupying two whole floors. Her relief at seeing the Swedish flag on the door was so great that tears came to her eyes.

She had planned her story carefully. She must not on any account say why she had come to Thailand, but that was a minor problem as she saw it. She was a tourist, plain and simple. Like all the other hundreds of thousands of Swedes who came here every year. And the fact that she had been robbed of all her means could not be unheard of, either. In her trouser pocket she had the copy of the police report to substantiate her story. The rest of what had happened to her – the fact that someone had cancelled her flight home, closed her email accounts and checked her out of the hotel – was something she had decided not to tell them. It would provoke far too many questions that she was not prepared to answer.

The loss of all her work material was hard to bear. The full weight of it had hit home in the night. Even her camera with all the pictures was gone. She swallowed to keep the tears at bay. Soon she would be home and then she could start to sort out this mess. At least she hoped so, with all her heart.

Maybe she should have foreseen that it would never work. That whoever had already taken such pains to take apart her life bit by bit naturally had not overlooked the possibility that she would turn to the Embassy. But she had not thought that far ahead, and did not notice the hard stare of the receptionist which followed her as she was shown in to see a member of the diplomatic staff.

First Secretary Andreas Blom greeted her with a cool handshake. His face was impassive as he asked her to sit down. When an assistant came by to ask if his guest wanted coffee, he waved her away and asked her to leave the door open. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a security guard patrolling the corridor, never far from the room where she was sitting.

‘I’m not sure what you think I can help you with,’ said Andreas Blom, leaning back in his seat.

He kept his hands clasped in his lap and looked at her through half-closed eyes. As if he was highly practised in not expending too much energy.

She cleared her throat several times, wished he would offer her a glass of water. But all he gave her was silence.

‘As I say, I’m in serious trouble,’ she began cautiously.

And she told him the story she had decided on. Of the mugging, and what she referred to as ‘a mistake’ at the hotel, which meant all her luggage had disappeared.

‘I’ve got to get home,’ she said, starting to cry. ‘I can’t get in touch with my parents and a friend who was going to help me hasn’t rung back either. I need a new passport and to borrow a bit of money. I’ll repay it as soon as I get home – if only you’ll help me.’

She let her tears flow freely, incapable of maintaining any façade. Only after a long silence did she raise her head and look at Andreas Blom. His face was immobile and he was still just sitting there.

‘Is that your version of events?’ he asked.

She stared at him.

‘Pardon?’

‘I asked if that’s the story you intend to tell the Thai authorities when they’re dealing with your case?’

‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

‘What did you say your name was?’ he interrupted.

She automatically repeated her forename and surname.

‘You’re really not making it easy for yourself,’ he said.

His words were greeted with silence; she had no idea what he expected her to say.

‘What I can help you with, Therese, is the following: legal representation, and a named contact here at the Embassy. But if you don’t immediately hand yourself over to the Thai police, your situation will automatically get considerably worse. You have already made things bad enough for yourself by giving a false identity to a person in a position of authority.’

She said nothing when he had finished. Thoughts were flapping round in her head like wild birds.

‘I don’t understand, I’m afraid,’ she whispered, though she was beginning to suspect the full extent of her problems. ‘And my name’s not Therese…’

Andreas Blom took a piece of paper out of his desk and put it in front of her.

‘Is this a copy of a report you made to the police yesterday?’

She quickly took out her own copy and compared them. It was the same document.

‘But that’s not your name,’ he said, pointing.

‘Yes it is,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Andreas Blom, ‘it isn’t. Because this is your name.’

He passed over another sheet of paper.

She stared at it without properly taking in what she was seeing. A copy of a passport with her photograph but a different personal identity number and another person’s name. Therese Björk, the passport holder was called.

The room began to spin.

‘No, no, no,’ she said. ‘That’s not me. Please, there has to be a way to sort this out…’

‘It can be sorted out very easily,’ said Andreas Blom firmly. ‘This is your passport and your identity. I’ve rung the Swedish police and the Swedish tax authorities to check. This is you, Therese. And this passport was found with all your other things in the hotel you were actually staying at, Hotel Nana. In the room you had left when the drug squad raided the hotel and found half a kilo of cocaine among your possessions.’

She suddenly felt sick and was afraid she would throw up on the floor. What Andreas Blom said after that only got through to her intermittently. She had the greatest difficulty in joining the fragments together to make a whole.

‘Between you and me, you’ve got a good chance at the trial if you do the following. One: hand yourself in right away. Two: tell them who it was that tipped you off about the raid so you could get out of the hotel in time. Two very simple things.’

He held two fingers up in the air to underline how simple it was.

She shifted uneasily and could not stop her tears from flowing.

‘Why would I come here to you and not leave the country if I was guilty of everything you’ve told me?’ she said, looking him in the eye.

He leant back in his chair again and gave a supercilious smile.

‘Because this is Thailand,’ he said, ‘and you know as well as I do that for you there’s no way out.’

STOCKHOLM

The night had brought new nightmares, variations on a theme. In these dreams she was no longer being hunted but was tied to a tree, surrounded by men in hoods who wanted to harm her. Fredrika Bergman had no idea at all where these absurd scenarios had come from. They did not remind her of anything she had experienced or ever heard of. And she hated being woken by her own screams, night after night, dripping with sweat and on the verge of tears. And tired. So horribly tired.

But she still went to work. She simply could not sit at home.

‘How are you?’ asked Ellen Lind gravely when they ran into each other in the staff room.

Fredrika did not even try to lie.

‘Pretty awful, I have to say,’ she admitted. ‘I’m sleeping terribly badly.’

‘Should you be here, then?’ asked Ellen. ‘Shouldn’t you be at home, resting?’

Fredrika shook her head stubbornly.

‘No more than I already am,’ she said wearily. ‘I’d rather be here.’

Ellen didn’t ask any more questions. She, like everyone else, wondered what Fredrika had thought it was going to be like. Expecting a baby, largely on your own, and then giving birth without the father there.

Fredrika felt guilty because Ellen was always the one asking the questions and she never reciprocated. She never asked Ellen how she was, or about her children or how things were going with the love of her life. They had met on a package holiday the previous year, and Ellen had fallen head over heels in love.

In love.

Until she fell pregnant, she had always been more or less content with the arrangement she and Spencer had. His coming and going in her life did not worry her; after all, she sometimes behaved the same way. Finding one lover and leaving another. Losing that lover and going back to Spencer. The problem was only becoming obvious now that she wasn’t her former self any more, and always felt better when she was closer to him. Of course he came as often as he could, and these days he always answered the phone when she rang. But he still was not a permanent fixture in her daily life.

‘I simply don’t understand a thing about this whole situation,’ her friend Julia said one day.

The same friend who had often asked how Fredrika could bear to have sex with a man so much older.

‘There are a lot of things we don’t understand in life,’ Fredrika retorted with a sharp note in her voice, and they said no more about it.

There were lots of emails in her inbox. She could hardly bring herself to look at them; most of them were of no interest, anyway.

‘Time for the firearms refresher course,’ one of them said. ‘Anyone interested in sharing lifts?’

Firearms refresher course. As if everyone in the force automatically needed to be told about that.

Some of the emails were from the union rep, asking her to get involved in improving conditions for the civilian employees. The police union seemed on occasions to be running a virtual campaign to stop civilian employees feeling at home in the force, and Jusek thought now was the time to hit back. Fredrika could not summon up the energy to care, though she would have liked to.

I’ve made my journey, she thought lethargically. I’ve chosen to stay here. For now. And at the moment, I’m not up to worrying about how other people feel.

She shuffled aimlessly through the paperwork in front of her. She must at least summon the energy to do what was necessary. Alex had said the dead vicar and his wife at Odenplan were to take priority over the case of the man in the road at the university. He had, in fact, decided they would try to get the latter off their plate. It was simply not possible for them to deal with two murder enquiries at once with their limited resources.

But all the findings were still being sent through to Fredrika rather than anywhere else. She read a report from the forensics lab which confirmed that material on the man’s clothes showed the car had driven over him as well as running into him. There were traces of car paint on his jacket. They were working to identify the type of paint so they would be able to match it against a suspect vehicle, if one turned up.

She clicked on through her new emails. Still not a peep out of the national CID about the fingerprints. Frustrated, she picked up the phone.

‘I was just going to ring you,’ the woman at the other end said eagerly.

Fredrika was taken aback by her chirpy tone, so unlike two days before.

‘Oh yes,’ she said, trying not to sound equally excited.

She failed, but the woman did not seem to notice.

‘I ran the prints through our database, and he came up.’

The woman’s voice, carried with piercing clarity along the line, hit Fredrika with great force.

‘Really?’ she said in astonishment.

‘Yes it did,’ the woman said triumphantly. ‘Do you remember the armed robbery of the security van outside Forex in Uppsala last week?’

Fredrika’s heart gave a jolt. Forex.

‘Of course,’ she said quickly.

‘A weapon suspected of being used in the hold-up was found at the weekend by a man out walking his dog. That’s very peculiar, given how minutely everything else was planned. Anyway, they were able to get a set of prints off the gun.’

‘The unidentified man’s,’ Fredrika said tensely.

‘Exactly.’

She thanked the woman and hung up. The Forex robbery was the latest in a series of major armed hold-ups in and around Stockholm. She felt quite elated, as if she had achieved something important herself, just by making a phone call. This cleared up the confusion as to whose the case was; it would be entirely reasonable for it to go to the national CID, which was handling the robberies.

Fredrika was smiling as she knocked on Alex’s door.

When he heard how easily he could be rid of the hit-and-run case, Alex moved with unusual speed. And as soon as the case had been transferred to the national CID, Fredrika was able to focus more wholeheartedly on the Ahlbin case. It was nearly eleven, and she and Joar were due to see Agne Nilsson from the support group for former right-wing extremists. It felt strange to have Joar at her side. Not wrong, not at all, but different.

He knocked on her door just in time for them to go down and receive their visitor.

‘Ready,’ he asked.

He gave a polite smile, stiff and correct.

It gave nothing away, reflected Fredrika. It just sat there in the middle of his face, as if drawn on a mask.

She wondered what was behind the mask. He did not wear a ring, but maybe he had a partner? Had he got children? Did he live in a house or a flat? Did he have a car or come in by bus?

Fredrika did not feel curious, but that was largely because she was so good at reading other people. She did not need to wonder about things because they were generally written all over people, even if they were not aware of it or did not want to admit it.

‘Read and you’ll know,’ her mother used to say.

And that was so true, in Fredrika’s view.

Agne was at reception, looking lost. His appearance was not at all what Fredrika expected. He was short and stocky, pale with thinning hair. But his eyes – she caught herself staring at him intently – his eyes were hard and searching, bright and full of fiery energy.

Like a stubborn, unruly child, she thought as she shook his hand and introduced herself.

She saw that his eyes were automatically drawn to her stomach, but he made no comment. She was grateful. People seemed to assume, wrongly, that it was okay to touch a women expecting a baby in a way you would never think of touching her non-pregnant counterpart. A tender stroking of her stomach, with one hand or both. Fredrika felt a sense of panic on running into certain male colleagues in the corridor because she could feel their eyes boring into her. She had even considered raising the matter at a staff meeting, but could not find the right words.

They took Agne Nilsson to one of the visitor rooms with windows. The windowless interview rooms did not invite reasonable discussions. Nor was there any reason to treat members of the public not suspected of a crime the same way as criminals. So Joar went off to fetch coffee and Fredrika stood chatting to Agne Nilsson.

‘Perhaps you could tell us more about your group?’ said Joar when they were all seated with their coffee.

Agne Nilsson shifted in his chair, looking as though he did not really know where to begin.

‘It started two years ago,’ he said. ‘Jakob and I were good friends going back a lot longer than that. Grew up on the same block.’

He gave a sad smile and went on. The project had been Jakob Ahlbin’s idea, as these things so often were. It all started when he was confronted by a young man who stayed behind after one of his lectures. He was dressed like most other young men, but his hair – or lack of it – and a number of tattoos revealed his ideological home.

‘Don’t go thinking it’s that effing simple,’ he had told Jakob. ‘You stand there going on about what it’s like for those immigrants and how the rest of us should behave, but not all of us have a goddamn choice. You can be effing sure of that.’

It was the beginning of a long conversation. The lad was scared and unhappy. He had got into warped, right-wing circles at the tender age of fourteen, through his elder brother. Now he was nineteen, and about to leave school. His brother had left the movement some years before, moved away and found a job. He himself was stuck in Stockholm with useless school grades and nowhere to go, trapped in a circle of acquaintances he no longer felt he had anything in common with. And he had just met this girl. Nadima, from Syria.

‘It should be her family, not my mates, who’ve got problems with us being together,’ the boy had told Jakob. ‘But her dad’s as cool as anything about her meeting a Swedish guy. My mates, though, they’d kill us both if they knew.’

The boy had taken about as much as any young person could bear. Jakob could see it, and that was what made him want to act.

‘Give me a few days,’ Jakob said. ‘I know some people. I’ll ask around about what someone in your situation could do.’

But it turned out he had not got a few days. The gang had got wind that one of its members was thinking of leaving and taking up with an immigrant girl, and one day when the two were coming back from a walk, they were waiting for them.

Agne Nilsson’s eyes were glinting with moisture.

‘It really shook Jakob,’ he said huskily. ‘The fact that he hadn’t appreciated the urgency.’

‘What happened?’ asked Joar, making Fredrika nervous.

She did not want any grisly details, fearing they would be too much for her.

‘They raped her, one after another, and made the boy watch. Then they beat him pretty much to a pulp. He’s in a wheelchair now, and brain-damaged, too.’

Fredrika felt like crying.

‘And the girl?’ she asked, trying to keep things professional.

Agne Nilsson gave a smile for the first time since his arrival. It was thin but heartfelt.

‘She’s part of our network,’ he said. ‘Quite openly. Works her socks off. She’s the only one the local council has appointed to a full-time position. I think it’s been a way for her to move on.’

His words came as a relief to both Joar and Fredrika.

‘What was Jakob’s function in more concrete terms?’ asked Joar. ‘You said something about money from the council.’

Agne Nilsson nodded, to show he knew what Joar was driving at.

‘As I say, Nadima’s the only one employed full-time. And paid by the council, but apart from that they prefer to work with more established groups. We others have found various other ways of getting involved, with some support from our employers. Jakob was the only one who didn’t, in fact; his work was almost entirely voluntary. Don’t ask me why, but that’s the way it was. His primary contribution was as our spokesman and our main “ear to the ground”, as the police like to say. Did you ever see Jakob giving a talk?’

Fredrika and Joar shook their heads.

Agne Nilsson blinked a few times. ‘It was fantastic,’ he said, beaming. ‘He could get anybody at all to start thinking along new lines. His thing was to present things his audiences had heard a hundred times before, but in a different way. And the energy he injected into it. He really got through to people.’

He fiddled with one of his shirt buttons.

‘He should have been a politician,’ he said. ‘He was making his mark in that world, too.’

I would have liked Jakob, Fredrika thought to herself.

‘And what about his condition?’ she asked. ‘Did that seem to affect him in any noticeable way?’

‘No… I don’t quite know how to put it,’ said Agne, pulling a face. ‘Of course there were times when it got the better of him, and he was quite frank in telling us about them. From what I understood, it was worse when he was younger.’

‘But you never talked about it in greater detail?’ Joar asked with surprise in his voice. ‘Even though you’d known each other so long.’

‘No,’ conceded Agne Nilsson. ‘We didn’t. Jakob used to say that dwelling on his condition didn’t make it any better, and I’m sure he was right to some extent. So he only referred to it in a very general way.’

He cleared his throat.

‘We mostly talked about work when we met. That felt right for us both.’

‘But the threats Jakob received, did you know about those?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Agne. ‘Several of us had them around the same time.’

Fredrika stopped dead in the middle of her note taking.

‘Sorry?’

Agne Nilsson gave a firm nod.

‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘that was what happened. And it wasn’t just that recent clutch of them, it had happened before as well.’

‘From the same sender?’ asked Joar.

‘No, but with the same aim, so to speak. Other times when people thought we’d interfered with things that were none of our business.’

Joar took out the copies of the emails sent to Jakob.

‘Do you recognise these?’

‘I certainly do,’ said Agne. ‘I had some almost the same, as I told you. But mine didn’t say ‘‘fucking priest’’, they said ‘‘sodding socialist’’.’

He gave a wan smile.

‘Weren’t you ever frightened?’ put in Fredrika.

‘No, why should I be?’ said Agne Nilsson as if it was not a question he had anticipated. ‘Nothing ever came of those threats. And they weren’t exactly unexpected. We always knew that our activities would be bound to annoy and provoke some people.’

‘But whoever wrote these sounds more than just annoyed,’ said Joar, indicating the sheaf of papers in his hand.

‘Yes, but this was in the context of the latest case we’d been working on. A young man looking for a way out of the Sons of the People. We knew it was going to be damned difficult. And if the emails hadn’t dried up we were planning to go to the police. That’s to say, there are police officers in our group who we can talk to, but I mean making a formal report – that was what we hadn’t got round to.’

Fredrika suppressed a sigh. She hoped they wouldn’t take so long over it the next time.

‘What do you mean when you say the emails dried up?’ asked Joar, frowning. ‘Jakob was getting them virtually right up to the day he died.’

Agne held up his hands.

‘I really can’t explain it,’ he said. ‘I spoke to Jakob last week and at that point none of us had had any more emails. I didn’t get any after that, so I didn’t raise the matter with him. And he didn’t say anything, either.’

He looked uncomfortable.

‘Though I have to say we hadn’t exchanged that many words over the past ten days. He had lots of lecturing commitments and I was pretty busy, too.’

‘Can we have copies of the emails you received?’ asked Joar.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Agne Nilsson.

‘Do you know a Tony Svensson?’ was Joar’s next question.

Agne Nilsson’s face darkened.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said again. ‘So does every social worker and police officer on the estate where he lives.’

‘Did you know he was the one sending your group members the emails? Well, sending Jakob’s, at any rate?’

Agne Nilsson shook his head mutely.

‘What I mean is, we knew he was part of their organisation. But I didn’t know he was the actual one sending the threats. They were only signed SP, you know.’

Joar seemed to be thinking.

‘So what happened?’ he asked after a while. ‘About the boy who was trying to leave Sons of the People, I mean?’

‘It was one hell of a mess, to put it bluntly,’ said Agne. ‘His name’s Ronny Berg, by the way. But I wasn’t in on the end of the case; Jakob took charge of it himself in the latter stages. And he hadn’t had time to tell us how it all turned out before he died. But I gathered there was a question mark over the boy’s real reasons for trying to get out.’

Fredrika leant forward with interest and knew she must look ridiculous as she found her bump was in the way and had to straighten up again.

‘How do you mean?’

‘It seemed he wasn’t trying to leave the organisation for ideological reasons but because he had fallen out with one of the other members. But as I say, I don’t know all that much about it. One of my fellow group members might know more; I could ask around.’

Joar nodded.

‘Yes, please do,’ he said.

And as he was gathering up his papers, Fredrika suggested tentatively: ‘You might need protection, Agne. Until we know how all this fits together. If it fits together.’

Agne Nilsson did not immediately respond, but then he said quietly: ‘So you think it might not be suicide after all?’

‘Yes,’ said Joar. ‘But we can’t be sure.’

‘Good,’ said Agne Nilsson, looking straight at them. ‘Because not a single bloody one of us believes Jakob could have done it: shot his wife and himself.’

Joar put his head on one side.

‘Sometimes people aren’t at all what they claim to be,’ he said mildly.

Just after 1 p.m. the news burst onto the website of one of the evening papers: ‘Gunshot vicar and wife: police suspect link to right-wing extremists’.

‘Damn and blast!’ roared Alex Recht, thumping his fist on the desk. ‘How the hell did that get out?’

In actual fact, there was no need to ask – things always leaked out at the preliminary enquiry stage. But Alex felt he had tried extra hard to stop it happening this time. And the truth was, very few people knew about their new line of enquiry.

‘The media are besieging us with calls,’ Ellen popped her head round the door to say. ‘What can we give them?’

‘Nothing,’ bellowed Alex. ‘Nothing at the moment. Have we managed to get hold of Johanna Ahlbin yet?’

Ellen shook her head.

‘No.’

‘And why not?’ groaned Alex. ‘Where the heck has the wretched girl got to?’

He hardly dared look at the computer screen from which pictures of Jakob Ahlbin were now staring back at him. It was all out there now, and there was no way of breaking the news to his younger daughter in person. The only things the journalists had missed out on were the names and pictures of the two daughters.

At least we tried, Alex thought wearily.

Ellen had been putting all her effort into trying to locate Johanna. The girl’s employer and colleagues had provided them with the names and numbers of friends who might know her whereabouts, but no one could tell them where she was, how she was or how much she already knew.

‘It’s too bloody awful,’ Alex said under his breath. ‘Having to hear news like that from the media.’

‘But we did try,’ said Ellen, looking unhappy.

‘Yes, I suppose we did,’ said Alex, turning away from the computer.

‘Oh by the way, here’s something the assistant in the technical section sent over,’ said Ellen, putting a plastic folder on his desk. ‘Print-outs of lecture material they found on Jakob’s hard drive.’

‘Anything useful?’

‘No, I don’t think so. But the name on the notepad could be of interest. Though I don’t really know, of course.’

‘Notepad?’ muttered Alex, looking through the sheets of paper from the folder.

He found it right at the back. An unobtrusive little fawn jotter with just one word on it, ‘Muhammad’, and then a mobile number.

‘Where was this found?’ asked Alex.

‘In a locked drawer in his desk. It was underneath a pen tray.’

Something he had hidden away, concluded Alex.

Perhaps Muhammad was an illegal migrant he knew personally, or someone who had sought him out for some other reason.

‘Have we checked the phone number against our database?’

‘I just did,’ she said, looking pleased with herself. ‘And something came up, in fact, related to a passport reported missing. The man’s complete name and address were there.’

She handed him another slip of paper. Alex gave her a smile in return.

‘No criminal record,’ Ellen added, and then had to go because her mobile was ringing.

Alex wondered what he ought to do next. He looked at the name and number on the slip, and then at the plastic folder with all the other material. And then he looked at the report of the lost passport, which Ellen had printed out. All these passports that ‘vanished’. Without them, the stream of illegal migrants would have a hard time, Alex knew that.

We’ve turned Europe into a fortress as impregnable as Fort Knox, he thought grimly. At the price of losing control of the people who are going in and out of our country. Shameful for all concerned.

He gazed out of the window. Clear blue sky and brilliant sunshine, and the weekend only a few hours away. He blinked. There was no way he could face a whole weekend at home with Lena behaving like a stranger. She had become so inaccessible. For reasons he couldn’t put into words, he felt he could not talk to her about what had happened or the way the whole situation was affecting him.

Why not? wondered Alex. We’ve always been able to talk about everything.

Perhaps he ought to give it a try. Perhaps. But either way, he was definitely going to try to put in a few hours’ work over the weekend.

At first it looked as though the week was going to end as badly as it had begun. Peder Rydh was instructed to go through all the phone lists the police had had from Telia and from Jakob Ahlbin’s mobile supplier, while Joar got to go down with Fredrika to talk to Agne Nilsson. Peder felt as though he was going to blow sky high with frustration, but then he heard he was to be one of those interviewing Tony Svensson that afternoon, and calmed down. As he went through the lists, he even felt a bit exhilarated.

Every time he had to deal with material from phone tapping or surveillance, he was amazed at the vast number of calls people made every day. Often you could work out some sort of pattern, of course, like married couples who sometimes rang each other twice a day and sometimes not at all. But there were lots of other numbers and contacts to analyse. Contacts that could seem highly interesting in terms of timing, but which on closer examination turned out to be the local pizzeria, for example.

In the case of Jakob Ahlbin’s phone and any contact he might have had with Tony Svensson, it proved quite simple. Peder grinned and punched the air as he found a match.

Tony Svensson had rung Jakob Ahlbin on three occasions, and each time it was a very short call, making Peder assume he had got through to Jakob’s answering machine. They would never be able to recreate the actual content, but the very fact that Svensson had rung Ahlbin was proof enough.

He hurried out of his office and over to Alex’s. But he hovered uncertainly in the doorway; his boss looked even grumpier than usual. Peder gave a discreet cough.

‘Yes?’ said Alex severely, but softened when he saw who it was. ‘Oh, come on in.’

Somewhat heartened, Peder went in and showed Alex the telephone lists.

‘Good,’ said Alex, ‘good. Draw up an application to the prosecutor double quick; I want this bloke brought in for unlawful menace before the end of the day. Particularly now this crap’s all over the media.’

A warm feeling spread through Peder’s body. So he wasn’t being left entirely out in the cold. But with the warmth came the stress. Who had leaked the right-wing angle to the media?

He was heading for the door when Alex said: ‘Er, you haven’t got a minute, have you?’

It had been too good to be true, of course. Even before he sat down, he knew what Alex had on his mind. But the way he chose to express it came as a complete surprise.

‘In this workplace, as long as I’m in charge,’ he said, ‘a croissant is a croissant. And nothing else,’ he said, emphasising every syllable.

I’m gonna die, thought Peder. I’m gonna die of shame and I damn well deserve it, too.

He scarcely dared look at Alex, who went on relentlessly.

‘And when one of my staff – for private or other reasons – is in such a state that he can’t tell the difference between a pastry and something else, then I expect the person in question to get to grips with it and sort himself out.’

He stopped and fixed Peder with a look.

‘Understood?’

‘Understood,’ whispered Peder.

And wondered how on earth he could carry on doing his job.

They met in the living room of the older man. It was their third meeting in swift succession, and neither of them felt particularly comfortable in the company of the other. But there was no way round it, in view of recent events.

‘We knew it would generate a lot of attention,’ said the younger man. ‘It was hardly a surprise to any of us that a vicar committing suicide would be big news.’

There was no point contradicting him. Planning and setting the stage for an operation like that was one thing. Carrying it through was something else entirely. Holding your nerve and staying calm was vital.

The older man spoke.

‘There are a number of unfortunate circumstances that we need to be wary of,’ he said firmly. ‘The media reporting, for one thing. I wasn’t expecting to see articles with names and photos of the deceased until tomorrow morning at the earliest.’

‘No, I don’t think any of us were.’

‘Damn the police. Every investigation leaks like a blessed sieve.’

There was a pause.

‘This makes rather a mess of the timetable,’ sighed the older man. Particularly for our friend abroad. When do we expect her back?’

‘Monday, we thought.’

‘Does that seem credible? I mean, if the news is already out?’

‘Most of it can be explained away,’ the younger man said in a matter-of-fact tone.

He looked awful when he attempted a smile. A series of operations to correct his injury had only achieved half of what had been hoped for. And now he had decided to settle for looking this way. The crooked smile had become his trademark.

The older man got up and went over to the window.

‘I’m not very happy about the defection we had before all this happened. It disturbs me, I have to say. The fact that there’s someone out there who knows too much. I hope you’re right – that we can still consider him our friend. Things look bad for us otherwise.’

‘You know he hasn’t had his share yet,’ said the younger one. ‘That should keep him in line. And he was deep in the shit himself when he backed out. He could never shop us and keep in the clear himself.’

It was an argument that seemed to reassure the older man, who briskly moved on to the next point on the agenda.

‘I understand there was a problem with our latest daisy,’ he said, taking a seat in the wing-back chair by the bookshelf full of dictionaries and encyclopedias.

The younger man’s face hardened. For the first time since his arrival he looked visibly worried, and his words confirmed the fact.

‘That’s more of a problem. Unfortunately we weren’t able to pick our flower before he spread the good news, as it were, to some of his friends. Or one, at any rate. Who then got in touch with the vicar.’

The older man knitted his brow.

‘Have we any way of assessing the scale of the damage?’ he asked.

‘Yes, we’re pretty sure we can. And as I say, he didn’t let on to many people. Unfortunately, we haven’t got his friend’s name. But I’m on the case.’

The men fell silent. It was almost as if the sound had been absorbed by the bookshelves covering almost the full length of the walls and the expensive rugs on the floor. It was the older man who found his voice first.

‘And the next daisy?’

The younger man’s deformed smile appeared again.

‘He’s paying on Sunday.’

‘Good,’ said the older one. ‘Good.’

And he added:

‘Will this one live?’

Silence again.

‘Probably not. He seems to have blabbed, too, broken the rules.’

The other man paled.

‘This wasn’t the way we envisaged things going. We can’t have any more failures like this. Maybe we need to suspend the operation for the time being?’

The younger man did not seem capable of seeing that disaster could be imminent.

‘Let’s wait and see how our friend on the other side of the law plays his cards during the day today.’

The older man pursed his lips.

‘It shouldn’t be a problem. He knows what will happen if he makes the mistake of betraying us.’

His stomach hurt as he said the words, almost as if they made him afraid of himself.

STOCKHOLM

Tony Svensson was a creature of habit. His world basically revolved round three places: network HQ, the car repair shop, and his home. They opted for the repair shop.

It was all achieved without too much fuss. He spat and swore as the police cars screeched to a halt outside where he worked, but once he appreciated the seriousness of the situation, he stopped resisting. The officers who were there to pick him up said he even smiled as the cold metal of the cuffs closed round his wrists. As if the feeling rekindled memories from a time he had almost forgotten.

The prosecutor agreed that there was sufficient proof for suspecting Tony Svensson of unlawful menace. The emails and phone lists were more than enough. It remained to be seen whether they could get a prosecution out of it; it depended how cooperative Agne Nilsson was. Unlike Jakob Ahlbin, he was still alive and able to testify about the threats. If he was willing. Not many people dared to testify against groups like Tony Svensson’s.

Peder and Joar were to conduct the interview. The energy which interviewing normally injected into Peder failed to materialise when he had to work with Joar. He glanced sideways at his colleague as they stood in silence in the lift. A pink shirt under his jacket. As if that was the sort of thing you could wear in the force. Another of those signs.

There’s something weird about that guy, thought Peder. And I shall damn well find out what it is, even if I have to drag it out of him.

Tony Svensson was waiting for them in the interview room where they had taken him after his formal admission to custody.

‘You know what crime you are suspected of?’ asked Joar.

Tony Svensson smiled and nodded. It was obvious he had been through all this before and he was taking the whole thing phlegmatically. As if you simply had to reckon on things sometimes going wrong, and then you had to take the consequences.

Had he not been so unkempt, he might even have passed for good-looking. But his shaven head, tattooed arms and oil-rimmed nails made him look like the gangster he was. His eyes were dark. Like two pistol bullets aimed at Peder and Joar.

He’s sharp, Peder judged instinctively. That’s why he’s so cool. And because he’s managed to get his solicitor here already.

‘It would be helpful if you answered in words, so it can be heard on the tape,’ Joar pointed out in a friendly way.

Rather too friendly.

Peder went cold. There was something spooky about the role Joar was adopting. Too balanced to be true. As if he might suddenly fly off the handle, throw himself across the table and kill the person on the other side.

Psychopath, that was the word that flashed into Peder’s mind.

‘Jakob Ahlbin,’ he said in a steady voice. ‘Does that name ring a bell?’

Tony Svensson hesitated. His solicitor tried to catch his eye, but Svensson avoided his look.

‘I may have heard the name some time,’ he answered.

‘In what context?’ asked Joar.

Tony Svensson brightened up again.

‘He interfered in the private affairs of me and my friends; that was how we got to know each other.’

‘In what way did he interfere?’ asked Peder.

A sigh escaped the shaven-headed man on the other side of the table.

‘He tried to come between us, make trouble.’

‘How?’

‘By poking his nose into a conflict that had nothing to do with him.’

‘What conflict?’

‘Nothing I want to go into.’

Silence.

‘Maybe a conflict that concerned someone who didn’t want to stay in your group?’ said Joar, leaning back with his arms folded on his chest.

Just the way Tony Svensson himself was sitting.

‘Yes, maybe it was,’ replied Tony.

‘So what did you do?’ asked Peder.

‘When?’

‘When Jakob Ahlbin took an interest in things that were no business of his.’

‘Ah, you mean then.’

Tony shifted his position and the solicitor leafed unobtrusively though his papers. In his thoughts he was clearly already on the way to the meeting with his next client.

‘I tried to make him see that he should stick to his own affairs and leave other people’s out of it,’ Svensson said.

‘How did you make him see that?’

‘I rang him and told him to go to hell. And sent a few emails as well.’

Joar and Peder automatically started flicking through the print-outs they had in front of them.

‘Did you say anything else in the emails?’ asked Peder.

‘You’ve got them right in front of you, for fuck’s sake,’ hissed Tony Svensson, his patience suddenly at an end. ‘Why don’t you read them out?’

Joar cleared his throat and read out loud: ‘Things are looking bad for you, Ahlbin. Back off from this shit while you still can.’

‘Did you write that?’

‘Yes,’ replied Tony Svensson. ‘But I don’t fucking well see how anyone could call it a threat.’

‘Wait,’ said Peder gently, ‘there’s more.’

He read out: ‘Pity you can’t stop fucking us about, scumbag vicar. Pity you can’t see that the one in the sorriest state after all this will be you.’

Tony Svensson started to laugh.

‘Still not a real threat.’

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ said Joar. The expression ‘‘sorry state’’ isn’t usually used in a positive sense.’

‘But it’s bloody hard to tell, isn’t it?’ said Tony with a wink.

The wink was a step too far for Joar and Peder sensed an instant change to the atmosphere in the room.

‘All right then,’ he said, hoping to take command of the interview for a while. ‘Let’s try something a bit more colourful: ‘You ought to listen to us, vicar. You’ve got the trials of Job ahead of you if you don’t stop your activities right away.’

Tony Svensson said nothing and his face froze.

Then he leant across the table and raised a finger.

‘I fucking well never wrote that,’ he hissed, underlining every syllable.

Peder raised an eyebrow.

‘You didn’t?’ he said, feigning surprise. ‘So you mean someone else suddenly started emailing Jakob Ahlbin from your computer and signing themselves “SP”?’

‘Are you saying that email came from my computer?’ demanded Tony Svensson loudly.

‘Yes,’ said Peder, looking down at his paperwork.

Only to discover that he was wrong. The email he had just quoted was one of the ones that had not come from the suspect’s own computer.

Tony Svensson saw Peder’s expression change and he relaxed, leaning back again.

‘Thought not,’ he said.

‘So you’re claiming someone else was sending emails to Jakob on the same subject? Someone other than you?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m claiming,’ Tony Svensson snapped. ‘I didn’t email the vicar from any computer except the one I’ve got at home.’

‘You mean the one we’ve just brought in?’ Joar corrected him with sarcasm. ‘We’ve just searched your place and taken a few things for examination.’

The man’s dark eyes grew even darker and Peder saw him swallow several times. But he said nothing.

He’s clever, thought Peder. He knows when to leave it.

‘Okay, is there anything else you want?’ Tony said testily. ‘I’m in a hurry now.’

‘But we’re not,’ Joar said firmly. ‘What did you say when you phoned Jakob Ahlbin?’

Tony gave a loud and exaggerated sigh.

‘I left a total of three messages on the old man’s answering machine,’ he said. ‘And they were almost identical to the emails. Which I sent from my own computer and nobody else’s.’

‘Did you have any other kind of contact with Jakob Ahlbin?’ asked Joar.

‘No.’

‘You never went to his flat?’

‘No.’

‘So how come we found your fingerprints on his front door?’ asked Joar.

Peder stiffened. What in hell’s name? He had not seen any report of that.

Tony Svensson seemed to have been caught equally off guard.

‘I went there and rang the doorbell, all right? Banged on the door. But nobody opened it, and I shoved off again.’

‘When was that?’

‘Um,’ said Tony Svensson, and appeared to be thinking. ‘It must’ve been a week ago. Like, last Saturday.’

‘Why?’ asked Joar. ‘If you didn’t feel the need to send any more emails, then…’

‘I was scared I’d judged it wrong,’ Tony Svensson said angrily. ‘I sent the emails to calm the old geezer down, to get him to keep his nose out of our internal affairs. And then it, like, resolved itself, the difference of opinion we had in our group. At least that was the way we saw it. The guy we fell out with – well, we sorted it out between us. But then there was another round of trouble and I was sure the vicar was behind it again. So I went over to his place. But that was the only time.’

Joar nodded slowly.

‘That was the only time?’ he repeated.

‘I swear it,’ said Tony Svensson. ‘And if you tell me you found my fingerprints inside the flat, you’re lying. Because I’ve never been in there.’

Joar sat mute and Peder seethed with fury. How the hell dared Joar go down to an interrogation without giving his colleague all the facts in advance?

Joar looked amused.

‘Can we have the names of all the others who can confirm your version?’ he said.

‘Yep, sure,’ said Tony Svensson, sounding exaggeratedly positive. ‘You can start by asking Ronny Berg.’

Berg. The name Agne Nilsson had already given them.

Tony went on:

‘That’s if he wants to talk to you. Then you can hear what the vicar was demanding in return.’

The last word ricocheted around the interview room. In return?

Just as Peder and Joar went off to interview Tony Svensson, Alex knocked on Fredrika Bergman’s door and asked if she wanted to come with him to see someone.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked when she had gathered up her things.

Alex explained about the scribbled name and telephone number they had found in a locked drawer in Jakob Ahlbin’s desk.

‘I took a chance, you might say,’ he went on. ‘Rang the fellow up, told him what had happened and asked how he knew Jakob Ahlbin. At first he refused to answer, didn’t want anything to do with the police. Then he said Ahlbin had rung him about something; that was how they had come into contact with each other. But he wouldn’t say what about.’

‘He didn’t want to talk on the phone or he didn’t want to talk at all?’

‘He didn’t want to talk at all, but I thought if we went out there unannounced, maybe he’d want to talk after all.’

They took the lift down to the garage. Fredrika thought how tired Alex looked. Tired, and worried, too. In another time, and another workplace, she would have asked him how he was, indicated she’d be happy to listen if he wanted to talk. But just now she could not summon the energy.

They drove across Kungsholmen in silence, took the E4 south to Skärholmen. Alex put the radio on.

‘Have the media been beating a path to your door?’ Fredrika asked, knowing what the answer would be.

‘You can say that again,’ Alex said crossly. ‘And they simply can’t accept that we have no bloody comment to make. We’ve got to raise our game here and at least come up with a line or two to keep the news crews happy, with the evening bulletins coming up.’

Fredrika sat quietly, mulling things over.

‘That’s the thing I can’t make any sense of,’ she said eventually.

‘What?’

‘The idea that Tony Svensson and his mates could get into a flat in the middle of town at five in the afternoon, shoot two people and get away without anyone seeing them, and without leaving a single trace behind them. And on top of all that, get it to look like suicide.’

Alex looked at her.

‘The same thought had occurred to me,’ he said. ‘But I have to admit I’m having more and more trouble convincing myself it was suicide.’

‘Me too,’ Fredrika replied.

‘How the hell could you be so irresponsible?’ demanded Peder as soon as they were back upstairs in the department.

Joar looked unruffled.

‘The fingerprint report came in at the last minute and I didn’t have time to tell you,’ he said with a slight shrug. ‘I’m sorry about that, but these things happen.’

Peder believed neither of those things.

‘I could have made a real fool of myself,’ he went on indignantly. ‘It was sheer luck I didn’t put my foot in it.’

He stood there, waiting for Joar’s countermove. When it came, it was as much of a shock as Alex’s sortie earlier in the day.

‘Luck?’ said Joar, his eyes so dark that Peder’s mouth went dry. ‘Luck?’

The tension in the air was as thick as smoke. Joar took a step closer.

‘That seems to be what we have to hope for all the time, working with you. I have to say I’ve no idea how you came to be promoted this far in the force, given how insensitive and unprofessional you are.’

Peder clenched his fists, bounced on the balls of his feet and wondered if he would make it out of the room without beating the hell out of his colleague first.

‘Watch yourself,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m the one in the group on the permanent staff; nobody knows how long Alex will put up with your stirring.’

Joar gave him a contemptuous look.

‘Think we both know you’d be wasting your time, Peder. Alex is more than happy with my performance. How he assesses yours is a bit more doubtful. You and your croissants.’

By the time Joar reached the end of his sentence, Peder was convinced this would be the first time in his life he assaulted another man in anger.

I’ll take him down another time, the fucking madman, he vowed to himself as he turned on his heel and left the room.

In his office he wondered what he really knew about his colleague. Not much at all, he realised. He had worked on cases for the Environmental Crime Agency, and for the past year he had been with the Södermalm Police. Just as Peder had been the year before that. He frowned. He often met up with the lads he had worked with there for a beer, but strangely enough they had never even mentioned Joar.

Thoughts were coming to him thick and fast now, and he could not stop them.

Pia Nordh was still working in Södermalm.

The name brought back so many memories that it almost hurt. Initially a sexual dalliance with an attractive colleague, to escape an everyday life that increasingly resembled a desert trek with no water or mirages. Then a habit. And then nothing. Until he was bored again. In the course of that bloody intense missing-girl case last summer.

His fingers fumbled as he found her number. He was breathing heavily as it rang. And then her voice: ‘Hi, Pia here.’

He felt warmth spreading through his chest. She was someone else’s now, someone serious. The word made him feel quite sick – ‘serious’. What was that?

‘Er, hi. It’s me, Peder.’

His voice sounded pathetic. Feebler than he had intended. There was no response.

‘Hello, Peder,’ she said in the end.

‘How’re things?’

He coughed and tried to brace himself. Somewhere inside he knew he had behaved badly towards her, but he would hardly improve matters by pretending to be her poodle now.

‘Fine, thanks,’ she said.

Still on her guard.

‘Um, I was wondering if you could help me with something,’ he said, lowering his voice, unaccountably nervous that Joar was deranged enough to be out in the corridor eavesdropping. The blood was surging round his body and there was no quelling his agitation. How the hell had he managed to balls things up like this?

Out in the corridor, Joar laughed. Peder was wrenched back to real life and his thoughts were again on the colleague who had given him such a bitter pill to swallow.

‘All right, I’m listening,’ Pia said in a soft voice.

‘Joar Sahlin,’ said Peder, ‘do you know him?’

Silence.

‘He’s pretty new here,’ Peder went on, ‘and apparently he worked with your lot before that. I’ve had a few problems with him and I just wanted someone to check him out. See if there are any skeletons in his cupboard.’

He heard a sharp intake of breath from Pia.

‘For God’s sake, Peder.’

‘No need to spend a lot of time on it,’ he added quickly.

She gave a dry laugh, and he could visualise her shaking her head. Her blonde hair swinging to and fro.

‘No need to spend a lot of time on it?’ she repeated gruffly. ‘Well, that’s very decent of you.’

‘I didn’t mean…’ began Peder, rather surprised by her reaction.

‘Leave it,’ she hissed.

He blinked in consternation, but had no time to reply before she went on.

‘Do you think I don’t know what you’re up to?’

All at once, she sounded on the verge of tears.

‘Leave it, Peder,’ she said again. ‘Just leave it.’

And then – the words that made time stand still:

‘Joar’s the first guy for several years I’ve had a really good relationship with. We’re looking for a flat so we can move in together. He’s an extremely good man and human being. And then you do this.’

There. Fury exploded, boiled over and drove him almost out of his mind. He’d been working with that bloody psychopath for weeks. And the whole time – the whole time – he’d been in the weaker position. Joar going to the head of HR and squealing about the croissants. Joar having it off with his ex.

‘You’ve got to let it go, and move on,’ she sighed as he said nothing. ‘For your own sake.’

Shame came washing over him. She would never believe him if he said he hadn’t had the slightest idea that Joar was her new boyfriend.

‘Forget I rang,’ he hissed, and cut her off.

Then he sat at his desk and waited for his fury to drain away.

Muhammad Abdullah had come to Sweden over twenty years ago. Saddam Hussein’s regime had made it impossible for him to stay in Iraq, he told Fredrika and Alex once they had persuaded him to invite them into his flat.

There was plenty of room for Muhammad and his wife. The children had already moved out.

‘But they both live nearby,’ he said, sounding happy about it.

His wife served coffee and biscuits. Alex looked around. Someone had put a lot of effort into matching curtains to tablecloths and pictures. There was a sweetish smell that Alex could not quite put his finger on.

As the man appeared to be relaxing a bit, Alex seized his chance.

‘We’re only really interested in what Jakob Ahlbin wanted when he got in touch with you,’ he said in a friendly tone.

Muhammad’s face went white.

‘I know nothing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Nothing.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ Alex said gently. ‘But nobody in the whole police force thinks you are involved in the awful thing that happened.’

He drank some of his coffee.

‘Did you and Jakob Ahlbin have a lot of contact?’ Fredrika asked genially.

‘No,’ said the man. ‘Just that once. He called me. And then we met. That was the only time.’

Alex could smell important information. And what was more, he could see that Muhammad thought it important, too. But he was scared, really scared.

Then he decided he had no choice. Leant back a little on the sofa, his eyes flickering around the room.

‘It was only a rumour,’ he said in a low voice.

‘What was?’ asked Fredrika.

‘That there was a new way of getting to Sweden if you needed help.’

His wife came back to hand round more biscuits. Nothing was said until she had finished.

‘You know how it is nowadays,’ he said tentatively. ‘It can cost up to 15,000 dollars to get to Sweden. Lots of the people who need to get away haven’t got that sort of money. When I first came it was different. Europe was different, and the routes weren’t the same. I heard from the son of a good friend of mine in Iraq that he was coming to Sweden on different terms.’

Alex frowned.

‘And what were they?’

‘Other terms,’ Muhammad said again. ‘It was going to cost less and it would be much easier to get a residence permit.’

He took a deep breath and reached out for his coffee cup.

‘But they were very demanding.’

‘Who?’

‘The smugglers. They had strict rules and it would be the worse for you if you didn’t stick to them. Or if you told anyone. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you, really. Not until my son’s friend was here.’

‘Hasn’t he got here yet?’ Fredrika asked cautiously.

Muhammad shook his head.

‘One morning he was just gone, his father told me. But he never got here. Or if he did, he must be in hiding.’

‘But shouldn’t he have gone to the Migration Agency?’ Alex wondered.

‘Maybe he did,’ suggested Muhammad. ‘But he hasn’t been in touch, anyway.’

‘Did he have family at home in Iraq?’ asked Alex.

‘A fiancée,’ said Muhammad. ‘They were going to get married, but he must have had to go in a hurry. And he didn’t say anything to her before he left, either.’

‘Are you sure he even left his own country?’ Fredrika asked. ‘Couldn’t something have happened to him in Iraq?’

‘Perhaps,’ Muhammad said evasively. ‘But I don’t think so. It’s not like it used to be, news gets around if anything happens to anyone. We would have heard if he’d been kidnapped or anything like that.’

Alex digested this.

‘What made Jakob decide to phone you? Did he know that you had this information?’

Muhammad’s face closed.

‘I’ve got a few contacts,’ he said carefully, and Alex knew he had hit the bull’s-eye. ‘It was them Jakob Ahlbin was ringing about. And then we got onto the other thing; it was me that brought it up.’

‘Jakob wasn’t already aware of it?’

‘No, he got the information from me. After he rang me, we arranged to meet somewhere, and I gave it to him.’

Muhammad looked almost proud.

‘And these contacts of yours, who are they?’ said Alex, trying to keep it casual.

‘For other people who want to come to Sweden,’ said Muhammad quietly, looking down at his hands. ‘I’m not involved in that work myself, I just know who they can phone.’

Alex had colleagues in the national CID who would have sold their own parents for names like those, but he decided not to give them Muhammad. They would have to find him for themselves.

‘Do you think this has anything to do with Jakob Ahlbin’s death?’ Muhammad asked curiously.

Alex’s answer was short and to the point.

‘Maybe, we don’t know. It would be as well for you not to tell anybody we’ve been here.’

Muhammad assured them he would not. And served them more coffee.

‘Hope your friend turns up,’ said Fredrika at the doorway as they were leaving.

Muhammad looked uneasy.

‘Yes, I hope so, too,’ he said. ‘For Farah’s sake if nothing else.’

Fredrika stopped short.

‘For whose sake?’

‘Farah, his fiancée. She’ll be beside herself with worry back home in Baghdad, I’m sure.’

He gave a dejected sigh.

‘You wonder how it can be possible. How someone can just disappear off the face of the earth.’

They had a final meeting in the Den before the weekend started. Peder and Joar were still busy writing up the interview when Alex called them in. It was very plain to him that if looks could kill, then Joar would be a dead man. Peder’s look had more hatred in it than any Alex had ever seen. What the hell had happened?

‘Well the whole bloody lot’s out in the media now,’ Alex said indignantly. ‘And they’ve already made their minds up: the vicar didn’t commit suicide but was murdered by right-wing extremists for taking a stand on the migrant question, which is such a hot potato at the moment.’

He stopped.

‘Is that right? Is Tony Svensson our man?’

‘It’s clearly a lead worth evaluating,’ Joar said thoughtfully, ‘but I don’t think Tony Svensson necessarily did it himself. There are plenty of other interesting characters around him.’

‘Such as?’ asked Alex.

‘I put together a few things after the interview,’ he said. ‘A contact of mine in the national CID gave me a hand; they’ve been watching these guys for a long time because they suspect them of some rather advanced varieties of organised crime. Tony Svensson’s the leader of the group, but under him – or alongside him, really – there are various other known criminals. One of them’s a professional burglar, for example. He’d be more than capable of getting into the Ahlbins’ flat in the middle of the day without being noticed. And another one seems pretty good at getting hold of guns.’

‘But the couple were shot with Jakob Ahlbin’s own hunting pistol,’ objected Alex.

‘True,’ said Joar. ‘But maybe they needed other weapons to threaten their way into the apartment?’

Alex considered this, and glanced towards Peder. The content of Joar’s presentation was clearly new to him. Alex therefore turned to him.

‘Peder, you were interviewing, too. What’s your spontaneous reaction?’

‘I suppose that could all fit,’ he said tersely, and Alex could see the veins protruding tensely in his neck.

Peder got to his feet and nodded to Joar.

‘Have you finished, then? I’ve got something I want to show everybody, too.’

A picture appeared on the white screen behind him as he started a slide show he had prepared.

‘This is Ronny Berg,’ Peder announced loudly. ‘He’s the defector that Jakob Ahlbin had a row with Sons of the People about.’

He fixed the impassive Joar with a triumphant look.

‘I decided to have a chat to him this afternoon,’ he went on. ‘And he gave me some information.’

‘Did you go on your own?’ asked Alex.

Peder breathed in.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think it would be a problem.’

But it was, and Alex knew that Peder knew it. All interviews had to be approved by Alex beforehand.

‘Jakob Ahlbin only imposed one condition on Ronny,’ Peder went on. ‘That he immediately stopped any criminal activity he was involved in. And that was problematic, apparently.’

‘Oh?’ said Alex, raising his eyebrows.

‘The policy of the support group’s very straightforward,’ said Peder. ‘They’re happy to help anybody at all get back on track with their lives again, but they insist the person stops all criminal activity they’re involved in. That was what Tony Svensson meant when he said Jakob had asked Berg for something in return.’

He took a breath and clicked onto the next picture.

‘Ronny Berg, former burglar, had a major heist planned which would bring in lots of cash, and he wanted to keep his fellow members out of it. But the Sons of the People got wind of it and there was big trouble. That was when Ronny Berg decided he wanted to leave the organisation, and he turned to the support group to help him, played repentant sinner and pretended he didn’t sympathise with the aims and ideologies of the organisation any more.

‘Did they swallow it?’ asked Fredrika.

‘Hook, line and sinker,’ said Peder. ‘To start with, at any rate. But then the Sons of the People tipped off the network that its new protegé wasn’t that keen on abandoning crime, after all, and Jakob Ahlbin decided to drop him.’

‘So Ronny Berg went back to the SP?’ said Alex.

‘No, not at all,’ said Peder. ‘He staked everything on doing this dream heist and getting out of the country. But Jakob Ahlbin anticipated his move and tipped off one of the police officers in the support network, who passed it on to his police colleagues.’

Peder looked pleased with himself.

‘Where is he now, then?’ Fredrika asked in confusion.

‘He’s here in Stockholm, in Kronoberg Prison,’ said Peder.

‘And he told you the whole story?’ Alex said in astonishment.

‘He told me as much as he wanted to,’ said Peder. ‘I got the rest from the officers in the support group who had the tip-off from Jakob.’

Alex drummed his fingers on the table.

‘How does Ronny Berg feel about Jakob Ahlbin now?’ he asked.

‘Hates him,’ Peder said.

‘Has he got an alibi for the night of the murder?’

‘Yes, he was already under arrest. The armed robbery had already spectacularly misfired by then. That was last Thursday, I think.’

‘So several days before Jakob and his wife were found dead,’ Alex said thoughtfully. ‘Plenty of time to plan a double murder and give orders for it to be carried out.’

Peder shook his head.

‘In theory yes, I suppose,’ he said. ‘But in practice? No, I don’t think so. Ronny Berg hasn’t got that kind of network. Particularly not now he’s without the backup and protection of the SP.’

Fredrika was poring dark-eyed over her notebook and Joar did not move a muscle. But he looked as if he was gritting his teeth, Alex thought.

‘I don’t buy this,’ Fredrika said with an urgency in her voice that Alex had not heard from her for a long time.

‘Don’t buy what?’ he asked.

‘The right-wing extremist line,’ she said, with a new focus in her eyes. ‘It’s like I was saying earlier, Alex, it all feels too advanced. Not the getting into a flat and shooting someone in the head, but the way it was done. And then there’s the background of Jakob Ahlbin’s condition. Whoever set up the murder must have known about it, that much is clear from the so-called suicide note.’

She went on, ‘If we were to assume it was someone they knew, it would all seem less far-fetched. Then it wouldn’t be at all strange that they’d been let into the flat or that there were no signs of a violent struggle.’

‘And it would explain the letter and the insight into their private lives,’ Peder added.

‘And what would the motive be, in that case?’ Alex asked in frustration.

Fredrika observed him for a moment.

‘I don’t know. But I think we ought to take a closer look at the link between Jakob Ahlbin and the man who was run down in Frescativägen, Yusuf.’

A man they could finally put a name to, with an indirect link to Jakob Ahlbin. Jakob had had contact with Muhammad, who in turn knew Yusuf.

‘Has that link got anything to do with the right-wing angle?’ asked Joar.

‘Not as far as we know.’

‘But Muhammad was scared,’ Fredrika put in firmly. ‘His friend’s son came to Sweden and died before he could even get to the Migration Agency.’

‘Having first dashed off to rob a bank,’ Peder supplied.

‘Which gets us tangled up in all that messy bank robbery business,’ said Alex, pulling a face.

Fredrika held her ground and indicated that she had more to say.

Here we go, thought Alex. She’s woken up again at last.

‘There’s one other thing,’ she said.

Alex noted that Joar was staring at Fredrika. He had not seen that side of her until now, Alex realised.

‘The emails,’ said Fredrika. ‘I think Tony Svensson was telling the truth when he said he didn’t write them all.’

The others looked at her expectantly.

‘It came to me when I read them through again,’ she said. ‘Even the first time I’d felt it was slightly out of character for Tony Svensson to make those references to Job. The emails that came from computers other than his home one have rather a different tone.’

Alex looked dubious.

‘Who would have access to his email account? The sender is clearly the same, whichever computer the emails came from.’

‘The emails sent from Tony Svensson’s own computer didn’t come from his personal email account. They came from one that all the SP have access to,’ said Fredrika. ‘So that means plenty of people to give away passwords and user names and so on.’

She leafed through the email print-outs that she had brought with her.

‘I’m positive,’ she said. ‘Whoever wrote these emails from other computers kind of tried to mimic the tone of the earlier ones, but didn’t really pull it off. There are clear biblical references in all of them, but none in the ones from Tony’s computer. The SP emails are much cruder and more direct.’

‘So what are you saying?’ asked Alex, cupping his chin in one hand.

‘I can’t be totally sure,’ conceded Fredrika. ‘But maybe someone else knew about the threats Jakob had already had, and used them to flesh out the threat scenario against him. Maybe so we wouldn’t look elsewhere, so they wouldn’t be traced. But Jakob realised, I’m sure.’

‘Realised what?’ asked Alex, sounding more irritated than he meant to.

‘That the threats came from different sources. And were to do with different things. That would explain why Jakob decided not to say anything to Agne Nilsson about those last emails.’

Fredrika pushed back some strands of hair that had flopped across her face.

‘We could follow up the email that was sent from Farsta library,’ she said. ‘You have to put your name on a list and show your ID card before you can go into the computer room there. They started doing that to clamp down on people coming in to surf porn sites.’

‘You check that out on Monday then,’ said Alex to round off the meeting, adding: ‘And keep an eye on the case of the man run over at the university. I want to know what the national CID come up with on that.’

Fredrika nodded and the rest got to their feet, since the meeting seemed to be over.

‘Right, it’s the weekend,’ Alex declared. ‘Let’s go home.’

Home. Anxiety gnawed at him as his thoughts turned to the two days off that lay ahead. Damn, he really had to come to some kind of decision. He left the Den without another word and trudged back to his room.

He wished his son would ring from South America.

Come home, he pleaded in his mind. Your mum hasn’t been herself these last weeks.

He swallowed hard and touched the scar tissue on his hands. South America felt a bloody long way away.

Then he made his mind up. If Lena herself volunteered no explanation over the weekend, he would share his worries with her at the start of next week.

And in the shadow of his private anxiety, a work-related one was taking shape. If it was not Tony Svensson who had murdered Jakob and Marja Ahlbin, who the devil was it?

Darkness, cold and a sky that was already as black as night met Fredrika as she left HQ to go home. Spencer would not be there until later; she had hours of solitude to kill.

I need a hobby, she thought as she walked from Kungsholmen to her flat by Vasa Park. And more friends.

Neither thing was really true. She had more friends than she had time for, and more leisure activities than she could ever fit in. But how did she end up with these voids of acute loneliness and inactivity? Fredrika had been wondering about this for several years and had concluded that the answer was actually quite simple: the problem was that she did not come first for anybody. There was no one for whom she took priority over everything else, and so from time to time she found herself feeling lonely and abandoned when all her friends’ diaries were full and they had no time to meet up with her, just when she needed their company most.

But was this evening really one of those times? It had been her own decision not to arrange anything with a friend while she was waiting for Spencer. On the other hand, no friends had rung, either.

The lonely, forlorn feeling had greatly intensified since she got pregnant. The exhaustion and nightmares played their part. And the wretched pains that sometimes made her want to scream.

She arrived home to a silent, empty flat. How she had loved this place when she found it. Big windows letting in huge amounts of light; polished pine floors. The original kitchen with a tiny maid’s room opening off it that she could turn into a little library.

This was where I was reborn, thought Fredrika.

The lights glimmered into life as she went round the flat turning them on, one after another. She put her hand on a radiator and found it cool. Spencer always objected to how cold she liked to keep the flat.

Spencer. Always Spencer. What does it mean, the fact that you and I were destined to meet?

The ringing of the phone cut through the flat. Her mother clearly had something on her mind.

‘Are you sleeping any better?’ was her opening gambit.

‘No,’ said Fredrika. ‘But I’m not in as much pain now. Haven’t been today, at any rate.’

‘I had an idea,’ her mother ventured.

Silence.

‘Perhaps you’d feel better if you started playing again?’

For a moment, time stood still and Fredrika was drowning in memories from the time before the Accident.

‘I don’t mean lots,’ her mother quickly added. ‘Not lots, just a little bit, to help you feel more in harmony with yourself. You know I always play when I can’t get to sleep.’

There was a time when conversations like that would have been natural for Fredrika and her mother. Back then, they used to play music together and draw up guidelines for Fredrika’s future. But that was then, before the Accident. Now, Fredrika’s mother no longer had a right to discuss Fredrika’s playing with her, and sensed as much when her daughter did not respond.

She decided to change the subject.

‘You’ve got to let us meet him, now.’

Firm but with a note of entreaty. Asking to be part of her daughter’s life again.

Fredrika felt shocked.

‘Your dad and I are trying, trying really hard in fact, to reconcile ourselves to the situation you’ve faced us with. We’re trying to understand the way you must have thought about this and planned it out. But we feel dreadfully excluded, Fredrika. Not only have you had a secret relationship with a man for over a decade, but now you’re expecting his baby as well.’

‘I don’t know what I can say,’ sighed Fredrika.

‘No, but I do,’ he mother said briskly. ‘Bring him round. Tomorrow.’

Fredrika weighed this in her mind and concluded that she could no longer keep Spencer and her family apart.

‘I’ll talk to Spencer when he gets here this evening,’ she promised. ‘I’ll let you know.’

Then she sat on the settee for a long time, brooding on the fateful question that had been haunting her for so long. What was the point, really, of falling in love with a man twenty years older than her who, married or not, would be leaving her long before she finished living her own life?

Alongside the darkness, fatigue and boredom came a soft call from a room she thought she had locked years before.

Play me, whispered a voice. Play.

She could not really explain afterwards what impulse it was that finally prompted her to get up, go into the hall and get out her violin for the first time since sentence was passed on her after the Accident. But suddenly there she was with the instrument, feeling the weight of it in her hands, so familiar and so infernally missed.

This was all I wanted to be.

By the time Spencer arrived a few hours later, the instrument lay in its case again. Newly tuned and played.

They came for him late in the evening. It was a procedure not unlike some he remembered from his past. Strangers arrived in the darkness with keys to a door only he should have been able to open. He lay stiffly between the sheets in the bed, with nowhere to go. Then he heard the man’s voice, the Swedish one who spoke such good Arabic.

‘Good evening, Ali,’ said the voice. ‘Are you awake?’

Of course he was awake. How much had he actually slept since he left Iraq? He guessed it did not amount to more than ten hours all told.

‘I’m here,’ he said, climbing out of bed.

They came into the room, all of them at once. The woman was not with them this time, but the man had two other men with him, strangers to Ali. He felt embarrassed standing there in his underpants. And socks. His feet were always so cold. He had stopped worrying about the smoky smell in the flat. The fresh pungency of newly painted walls that had met him when he first stepped into it was long gone.

‘Get your clothes on,’ said the man with a smile. ‘You’re going to stay somewhere else until Sunday.’

Relief spread through his body. He was going to get out of here – at last. Feel the coolness on his cheeks, breathe the fresh air. But the news also came as a surprise. No one had said anything about a change of accommodation.

He looked at his watch as he was pulling on his jeans and jersey; it was nearly midnight. The men moved around the flat like restless spirits. He could hear them in the kitchen, opening cupboards and the fridge. The food was all gone. He fervently hoped there would be more to eat at the new place.

They went down the stairs. The Arabic-speaking man went first, then Ali and the others brought up the rear. Out onto the pavement. Ali looked up and got snowflakes in his eyes. So much rain of that kind in this part of the world.

It was a bigger car this time, more like a minibus. Ali was to sit right at the back between the two strangers. The men put the bag he had been given in the boot. One man had a long overcoat on and reminded Ali of someone he had seen in a film. The other had a rather gruesome look. His face was strangely deformed. As if someone had slashed it down the middle with a knife and then sewed it back together. The man sensed Ali looking at him and turned his head slowly to meet his stare. Ali instinctively averted his eyes.

They drove through an estate where all the blocks of flats were the same. Then out onto a main road where the cars were going faster. Ali looked out to the right, then to the left. And suddenly, on the right. In the distance, but clearly visible. Something that looked like a gigantic golf ball, lit up like a temple.

‘The Globe,’ said the man beside him.

Ali looked straight ahead instead. How often did you travel in a car and not know where you were going?

Night closed the car in its embrace. His eyelids felt heavy.

Sometime, he thought wearily. Sometime I shall reach the end of this never-ending journey.

BANGKOK, THAILAND

They could not force her to hand herself over to the police. But nor could they offer her any protection. Advising her to contact the local police straight away, they threw her out into the street. She ran for her life, heading randomly down Sukhumvit. The exertion proved too much. With no food or drink inside her and the temperature nearing forty degrees Celsius, she only got a few blocks before she had to stop, trying to get her bearings. Her sense of direction had deserted her; she had no idea which direction she had run in.

Someone, she thought dully, someone – it did not matter who – should be able to vouch for who I am.

All her plans were in tatters. It was no longer a question of picking and choosing between friends and acquaintances and weighing up which of them she could confide in. Now she just needed all the help she could get.

Her knees gave way and she sank down onto the pavement. She tried to squeeze out one last drop of rational thought.

Think, think, think, she urged herself. What’s my main problem right now?

Her lack of money was acute, but manageable. The lack of contact details for her nearest and dearest now that she had no access to her mobile phone or email was harder. But there were other ways of getting hold of telephone numbers, and she could open new email accounts.

The priority had to be getting hold of her father. There was a risk that he, too, might be in danger.

Her eyes misted as she thought of her father. Why wasn’t he answering his phone? And her mother? Where had they both got to?

She counted her currency, and found she had enough baht for half an hour’s internet use and a couple of international calls.

Then that’s it, I’ll have nothing left, she thought, fighting to keep down the rising wave of panic that was threatening to overwhelm her.

The café owner was a kindly man who served coffee on the house once you were at your computer. She worked fast and efficiently. Found the telephone numbers of a handful of people she trusted and noted them down. Went to the hotmail homepage and opened a new email account. On consideration she decided not to use her own name in her new email address and opted for a more cryptic pseudonym. Her fingers moved nimbly over the keyboard, writing a brief, concise email to her father. She sent it to both of his email addresses, the private one and the church one. She felt ambivalent about contacting the friend who had not got back to her. Was it a mistake to discount him at this point? The thoughts swarmed like eager wasps in her tired head. She wrote him a few words:

Need urgent help. Contact Swedish Embassy in Bangkok and ask to fax them my personal ID and a print-out of my passport record.

When she had finished her emails, she felt an impulse that she could not explain when she looked back. She went to the website of one of the Swedish evening papers. Maybe to feel closer to her own country for a moment, maybe to feel less like a fugitive.

But she felt neither of those things, because when the page came up it told her that her parents had been found shot dead three days before, and that the police could not discount the theory that they had been killed by someone else. Mechanically, convinced that nothing she was reading could be true, she clicked her way through various articles. ‘Possible suicide’, ‘history of mental problems’, ‘devastated by daughter’s death’. Her brain stopped working. She quickly switched to the homepage of another newspaper. And then another. Ragnar Vinterman was quoted in several of the pieces. He was dismayed and upset, said the Church had lost one of its leading figures.

The scream trying to find its way out got stuck somewhere in her throat, refused to leave her body. But she felt as if she were suffocating, and the headlines smashed into her like the front of a truck that had failed to stop at the lights and ploughed across the carriageway to crash head-on into a much smaller vehicle. An all-pervading sense of horror made her shiver with cold despite the heat.

Look after me, she entreated in silent desperation. Deliver me from this nightmare.

Disconnected words came to her, forming prayers she had said with her parents as a child, making her want to get down on her knees by the computer.

‘Don’t cry,’ she whispered to herself, feeling her cheeks flaming and her eyes misting. ‘Oh God, don’t start crying or you’ll never stop.’

Her acute need to breathe drove her out into the street to inhale the intolerable, overheated city air.

She was back in the café a minute later. Sat down at the computer. The café owner looked uneasy but did not say anything. She read two more articles. ‘Jakob Ahlbin is said to have been told of his daughter’s death at the weekend…’ She shook her head. Impossible. Things like this just didn’t happen. Losing your entire family in one go.

On trembling legs she went over to the café owner and asked to borrow a telephone. At once. Emergency. Please hurry. He passed the receiver to her across the bar and insisted on helping her make the call.

She gave him the number, one digit at a time. The number she had not rung for so long but would still never forget.

Sister, sister dearest…

It rang and rang, and no one answered. Then the answering machine message cut in, the voice that reminded her of everything that felt so incredibly distant right now. And that was it. The tears flowed. Among all the thoughts swirling around in her head, there was only one that passed her by. The one that told her she had not read the newspaper properly, not grasped who was supposed to have died. When the beep went and she had to leave her message, she was sobbing.

‘Oh please, please answer if you can hear this.’