Sometimes the case proved to be as aberrant as it first appeared, but often there turned out to be no logical reason for Alex and his special team to take it on.
Alex currently had two cases on his plate: the case of the shooting of the Ahlbins, and the case of the unidentified hit-and-run victim in Frescativägen, up at the university. By the time he opened the meeting in the Den, Alex had already made his mind up. Unless Fredrika had come up with anything persuasive on the latter, they would hand it over to their colleagues in the Norrmalm Police.
Alex gave a bitter sigh. He was convinced that the furrow across his brow would soon be a permanent fixture. And he was not so sure he enjoyed his job any more.
‘Right, we’re all here,’ he said loudly, so everyone would sit down.
They were few in number, as usual. Fredrika, Joar and Ellen. Peder was missing, but Alex passed no comment.
‘But Peder…’ began Ellen.
‘He’ll be in later,’ Alex said, with evident irritation.
Then he and Joar listened attentively while Fredrika told them what her call to the hospital had yielded.
‘So it was Karolina’s sister who identified her?’ Joar said in surprise.
‘Not just identified,’ said Fredrika. ‘She came with her in the ambulance and was there while they tried to resuscitate her. I’ve spoken to the officers who talked to her at the hospital. She seemed quite in control and told them very matter-of-factly about all her sister’s problems. She told the officers it was a relief that her sister had found peace.’
Alex stroked his chin. His fingers ached a bit, but the physiotherapy was gradually achieving the desired effect.
‘So what does all this tell us?’ he said slowly, leaning back in his chair. ‘Karolina dies in the hospital on the Thursday. Her father doesn’t get the news until Sunday, possibly from the other daughter Johanna, according to the hospital doctor. But the mother is told nothing. And Johanna goes underground.’
He shook his head.
‘What have we managed to find out from Johanna Ahlbin’s workplace? Where is the woman?’
‘She’s on leave of absence at the moment,’ replied Joar. ‘I finally managed to track down the company where she works and spoke to somebody in authority, who told me she was on a period of leave. She’s been gone a fortnight and isn’t expected back for another three weeks.’
‘So she was already on leave of absence when her sister died?’ said Fredrika.
‘Yes,’ said Joar. ‘But the employer couldn’t tell me why she’d been granted it. Private reasons, it sounded like. They weren’t even sure if she was in the country.’
‘What employer grants five weeks’ leave of absence without going into the whys and wherefores?’ asked Fredrika.
‘This one obviously does,’ said Joar with a dubious expression. ‘I explained to her boss why we were looking for her, and that it was urgent. But he still couldn’t tell me any more.’
‘We haven’t got an email address, have we?’ Ellen put in.
‘We can’t break bad news like this by email,’ Alex said in dismay.
‘No, but we could tell her we needed to speak to her,’ said Ellen.
‘They gave me her work email address,’ said Joar. ‘But there’s no guarantee she’ll be checking that while she’s on leave. Her work mobile’s switched off.’
No one said anything. Alex turned over in his mind what he had heard, wanting his thoughts to fall into place so a clearer picture emerged.
‘There’s still something not right here,’ he said emphatically. ‘Why on earth would she break news as dramatic as her sister’s death to her father and then leave the country? Without exchanging a word on the subject with her mum?’
Joar nodded, mainly to himself.
‘It sounds odd, even when we take into account that the family knew about her sister’s drug abuse so the death was not entirely unexpected.’
‘Which leads us to another strange thing,’ Fredrika went on. ‘How could anyone in their circle of acquaintances still have been oblivious to Karolina’s addiction? She’d been heavily into drugs for a long time.’
‘I think Ragnar Vinterman gave us a clue to that,’ said Alex. ‘Karolina’s addiction was something they chose not to talk about out loud.’
‘But if they’d had time to get used to the fact that she might die, that makes her father’s reaction very strange,’ said Joar, steering the discussion back to the same old track. ‘According to Ragnar Vinterman, Karolina’s drug habit had been wearing her parents down for a long time, and we’ve also learnt that Johanna wasn’t exactly distraught when her sister died.’
‘Perhaps they weren’t that close?’ suggested Fredrika. ‘Do we know anything about their relationship?’
‘Or Johanna’s relationship with her parents, for that matter,’ Alex added. ‘Why did she go off directly after breaking the news? She knew how unstable her father could be. Just because you keep your distance from your family, as we’ve heard that she did, it doesn’t mean you behave completely irresponsibly towards them.’
They were all absorbed in their thoughts. Alex drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk.
‘But we mustn’t confuse one thing with another,’ he said sternly. ‘The fact that their family relationships were rather odd is neither here nor there in this case, really. I don’t see that any of the points we’ve been discussing change anything crucial.’
The others nodded in agreement. Out of the corner of his eye, Alex could see Fredrika fiddling with some other sheets of paper she had in front of her. He had almost overlooked the unidentified man.
‘We’ll email Johanna Ahlbin at the address we’ve got,’ he said. ‘And we’ll ask her employer to approach some of her colleagues, see if she was friendly with any of them outside work, in case they know where she is at the moment. And Joar and I will go to that other house, the one registered in the sisters’ names, and see if we can turn up anything useful there. What do we know about the place, Fredrika?’
Fredrika put aside the sheaf of papers she was holding and shuffled through another one.
‘The house is out at Ekerö,’ she told them. ‘It’s been in Marja Ahlbin’s family for a long time: it was originally bought by her maternal grandparents in the 1930s. Ownership was transferred to Marja in 1967, and then to Karolina and Johanna four years ago.’
‘Have they got equal shares in it?’ asked Joar.
Fredrika nodded.
‘Yes, according to the registry Johanna and Karolina Ahlbin own half each.’
‘And Marja’s parents?’ said Alex. ‘They’re no longer with us, I hope, because otherwise we’ve forgotten to let them know that their daughter’s been shot in the head by her own husband.’
Fredrika’s vigorous nodding confirmed this.
‘Yes, Jakob’s and Marja’s parents have all been dead for some years,’ she said. ‘Jakob had a brother, too, but he emigrated to America. Marja had no brothers or sisters.’
‘Is this house out at Ekerö a big place?’ asked Joar, looking thoughtful.
‘I printed out a map,’ said Fredrika, showing them. ‘The house is at the far end of a little road. It’s got a lot of ground with it and the property as a whole is valued at two and a half million kronor.’
Alex whistled.
‘So I assume the house goes to Johanna now Karolina’s dead?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Fredrika. ‘But I don’t know if it could be called a windfall. There’s still a big mortgage to pay off.’