‘Either that or it’s like Fredrika says, and she’s got reasons of her own to keep away from the police.’
He turned to Fredrika.
‘Over to something else,’ he said. ‘You made a very good point about the content of the emails and the fact that Tony Svensson could have been contacted by whoever wrote the emails that weren’t sent from his own computer. I had a word with the prosecutor and we can bring him in again. I want Joar and Peder to interview him together.’
He raised his eyes, and there was anger in them.
‘Together,’ he said. ‘Understood?’
The two men nodded.
‘Fredrika’s tackling the library in Farsta,’ Alex went on. ‘And I want us to keep chipping away at the circumstances surrounding Karolina’s death. See if anyone’s shown an interest in the body; there’ll have to be a funeral and so on. Maybe she had some bloke we haven’t heard about yet. Get back in touch with the hospital and keep damn well digging.’
Fredrika nodded and looked happy with that.
Alex looked around him distractedly.
‘I think that’s it for now,’ he said.
‘But what about the officer?’ Peder objected. ‘The one with the Norrmalm Police, that Tony Svensson was in touch with?’
‘I’ll deal with that myself,’ said Alex. ‘We’ll have another meeting here at four o’clock this afternoon.’
They were interrupted by a vigorous knock, and a detective from the Stockholm CID put his head round the door.
‘I’ve just got some information to pass on about Muhammad Abdullah, who you and Fredrika went to see in Skärholmen last week,’ he said, his eyes on Alex.
‘Oh yes?’ said Alex, none too pleased by the interruption.
‘He’s dead,’ the detective said. ‘He had to go out on some sort of business yesterday, and he didn’t come back. His wife alerted the police last night but she didn’t get any help until this morning. He was found shot in the head in a car park not far from where they live.’
Fredrika felt dismay and sorrow. The man had been pleasant and cooperative, despite feeling under threat. And now he was gone.
Alex swallowed.
‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he said quietly.
‘And that’s not all,’ said the visitor. ‘Yesterday evening, a jogger came across a dead body that had been dumped in the water at Brunnsviken, where the jogging track follows the shoreline. The man hasn’t been identified, but initial indications are that he was shot with the same weapon as Muhammad Abdullah.’
It had been a long and trying night for Alex, lying sleepless beside his wife, hour after hour. Thoughts of Lena seared him like fire. He had promised himself to try and talk to her over the weekend, but had not been up to it. Or had not dared.
What if she’s ill, what if it’s Alzheimer’s, he thought dully. What the hell will I do then?’
The fear of it paralysed him. He wished she would tell him what was wrong, since he was too weak to make the first move.
Fredrika came charging in, stomach first. She was back up to speed now, with only a month to go until her due date.
‘I just wanted to tell you I’m off to the hospital now.’
‘Sounds like a good start,’ said Alex.
‘I rang Farsta Library, too,’ she went on, ‘and they promised to get back to me. They haven’t got the data stored on computer so they were going to look it up in their log book.’
A man from the technical division knocked on the door behind Fredrika.
‘Yes?’ Alex demanded.
‘We spotted something when we were checking out the Ahlbins’ telephone subscription,’ said the technician.
‘Uhuh?’
‘Notice that they wanted to cancel their landline subscription was sent in writing to Telia a week before the murders, with a request for the subscription to end on Tuesday the 26th of February, that’s to say, the day they died.’
‘Who signed the letter?’ asked Alex.
‘Jakob Ahlbin himself. And he also rang and cancelled his mobile contract the day he died.’
‘And his wife’s mobile?’
The technician cleared his throat.
‘That was active until last Wednesday morning, and then the contract was terminated. We don’t know who by.’
‘Has anyone rung it?’ asked Alex.
The technician nodded.
‘In the time since we’ve had it here, the mobile operator has only registered two incoming calls: one from an unidentified number in Bangkok and one from a parishioner who clearly didn’t know she was dead.’
‘Bangkok?’ Fredrika echoed in surprise.
‘Yep.’
‘So he cancelled his phone subscription,’ Alex said. ‘Why would he do that?’
‘If it was him who did it,’ Fredrika put in.
‘Just so, if it was him who did it…’
‘Which it probably wasn’t,’ Fredrika went on. ‘It seems more likely, doesn’t it, that it was the same person who cancelled Marja’s, a bit later?’
‘It’s perfectly possible to cancel another person’s telephone subscription,’ the technician put in. ‘The only information they ask for, to check it’s the subscriber ringing, is basic stuff like national identity number and home address.’
Alex nodded and knitted his brows.
‘The question is,’ he said irascibly, ‘why the hell was that so important? Cutting off their phones?’
The technician withdrew and a cleaner passed by in the corridor. Fredrika nodded to him that it was fine to do her office.
Alex picked up the report of the two fatal shootings the night before. The man found in the water at Brunnsviken had probably died only an hour or so before the jogger found him. The murderer might very well not have thought anyone would be out jogging in Haga Park at midnight, and not expected the body to be found so soon. As for Muhammad Abdullah, he had died about two hours before the other man.
Same weapon, same perpetrator, Alex wondered. A peripatetic murderer, then.
As if reading his thoughts, Fredrika said:
‘I think we can assume it was the same perpetrator in both cases.’
Alex waited a moment and then asked:
‘And the link to Jakob Ahlbin? If there is one?’
‘Yes, I think there must be one,’ said Fredrika, looking thoughtful.
Then she said:
‘I think they both needed silencing, and that’s the link.’
Alex’s eyes grew wide.
‘But why?’
‘That’s what I don’t get,’ Fredrika said frustratedly. ‘Muhammad Abdullah was open with us about being scared when we met him, and with hindsight we know he had reason to be. And Jakob Ahlbin seems to have had reason to be fearful, too, but the question is whether he was aware of it himself.’
‘Exactly,’ said Alex. ‘And why was Muhammad Abdullah so bloody petrified, in fact? Well, because he was convinced he’d had sensitive information entrusted to him, and because he was scared the police were going to start looking into his connections with the traffickers.’
‘And he had time to pass the sensitive information about the new migrant-smuggling network on to Jakob,’ Fredrika supplied.
‘One of those emails told Jakob to stop looking. Does that mean he was actively seeking out information that he should have steered clear of?’
‘Seems a fair assumption.’
‘But can that really be the link?’ Alex said dubiously. ‘I mean, it sounded like something positive for the refugees that there might be this cheaper, better alternative that would mean not having to put themselves into the hands of corrupt gangsters.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Fredrika. ‘It really would be odd if people smuggling refugees on generous terms went in for killing vicars at the same time.’
The cleaner had finished and gave Fredrika a little wave as he came back past Alex’s room. Then something else occurred to her.
‘The man who was killed by the car outside the university,’ she said.
‘The murdered bank robber?’ queried Alex.