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.’