‘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.