I wonder why? thought Fredrika, moving on to the next room.
She looked at all the family photos hanging on the walls and standing on chests of drawers, and all the toys and children’s shoes that must have belonged to the girls when they were little. Just as her male colleagues had done, she noted Johanna Ahlbin’s disappearance from the pictures. She was in them, and then suddenly she wasn’t.
Was it symbolic? she asked herself. Did Johanna come to be seen as a less important part of the family? And if so, why? Or was it she who broke with the rest of them?
Fredrika started going through the pictures systematically. First the upstairs ones and then those on the ground floor. She took down the frames, opened them and checked the back of each photo for any dates or annotations. She was pleased to see that whoever framed the pictures had been very methodical, identifying virtually all of them.
‘Jakob, Marja, Karolina and Johanna, autumn ’85.’
‘Jakob and Johanna laying up the boat for the winter, ’89.’
‘Marja and Karolina when the well froze, ’86.’
Fredrika was so engrossed in the operation that she did not hear Alex come up behind her.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, making her jump.
‘Look,’ she said, holding out one of the photos. ‘Someone’s dated them all.’
Alex followed her long, agile fingers with fascination as she silently opened up frame after frame. When she had finished, it was impossible to tell that every frame had been taken down, opened and then put back together again.
‘In 1992, something changes,’ she said with conviction, clapping her hands to get the dust off.
She pointed to one of the photos.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘The family celebrating midsummer 1992. It seems to have been the last midsummer they were all here.’
She waved a hand along the top row of pictures.
‘They were here every year from the time Karolina was born. It seems to have been just them, nobody else. Just Jakob, Marja and the girls.’
Alex took down the 1992 picture with a thoughtful expression.
‘According to Elsie and Sven Ljung, this was about the time Jakob stopped hiding the refugees,’ he said.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Fredrika. ‘But we weren’t really told why.’
‘No,’ said Alex, hanging the picture back on the wall.
His pregnant colleague raised her magic finger again and pointed.
‘This is the other time,’ she said. ‘The other one Elsie mentioned.’
Alex looked at the picture.
‘It’s the last picture Johanna’s in, taken in 2004 which just fits. A family barbecue in the garden.’
‘What happened in 2004?’ asked Alex.
‘That was when Jakob Ahlbin started talking about going back to hiding refugees. Which apparently upset Johanna a great deal. And then Sven and Jakob fell out after Sven suggested Jakob could make some money out of the operation.’
‘Christ,’ muttered Alex. ‘Capitalising on human misery, what the hell made him think that was such a great idea?’
The pine floor creaked beneath their feet as they moved to and fro along the wall.
‘This was where it started, with his refugees in the basement,’ Alex said with a lump in his throat. ‘I just can’t get my head round how, though.’
Fredrika shivered.
‘We’ve simply got to find Johanna Ahlbin now,’ she said. ‘It feels to me as if time’s running out.’
‘I feel the same,’ Alex said grimly. ‘As if we’re heading for a bloody meltdown and can’t lift a finger to save the situation.’
Fredrika did up her jacket, which she had left undone while they were going round the house.
‘But at least we know now when it all started,’ she said. ‘This was where the Ahlbin family fell apart and this was where someone came to get the murder weapon. It all started here, in 1992.’
Daylight was fading by the time Alex and Fredrika got back to Kungsholmen. Alex often thought how senseless it was that it got dark in the middle of the afternoon for large parts of the year. And then never got dark in the summer. There was no moderation at these latitudes, he thought.
He called his group together for a quick update before they all went home. Fredrika had to slip straight out again to take a call.
‘If nobody has any objections I’d like to start by declaring the right-wing extremist angle defunct, and dropping it,’ he began.
Nobody objected.
‘The only thing of value we’ve learnt about the extremists and the threats from Tony Svensson and Sons of the People is that they came to someone else’s attention, and that person then exploited the dispute between SP and Jakob Ahlbin to conceal his own crime,’ Alex concluded.
He was about to go on when the door burst open and Fredrika came in with a look of triumph.
‘Tell us then,’ said Alex.
Peder pulled out a chair for Fredrika to sit on, keen to have her on his side of the table rather than Joar’s. Joar pulled a face and Alex suppressed a sigh.
‘A simple blood test proved that the woman, the drug addict, can’t possibly be related to Marja and Jakob.’
‘Well, well…’ began Peder.
‘Which at least in theory rules out her being Karolina Ahlbin. I mean, she could be adopted or something. Not that it’s likely, but the hospital wanted to make sure it had covered itself this time. So they did what they should have done from the word go: asked for copies of her dental records. And no – the woman wasn’t Karolina Ahlbin.’
‘Bloody incredible,’ said Joar, tossing his pen onto the table.
Alex looked in his direction. He could not recall having heard him swear before. Peder sent him a look too, but not a sharp one.
He’s already seen that side of him, thought Alex. I’m the one not keeping up.
Peder’s mobile rang and he hastily switched it off.
‘My brother,’ he said. ‘He’s been ringing all day, he just keeps on.’
‘If you want a word with him do feel free to pop out,’ said Alex, who was aware of Jimmy’s situation but kept it to himself.
Peder shook his head firmly.
‘Then we know for sure that Karolina’s sister deliberately identified another woman as her sister,’ Alex said. ‘But we haven’t heard from Karolina despite the fact that the news of her parents’ deaths is splashed all over the newspapers.’
He paused.
‘So what does that tell us?’
‘Either she’s dead, or for some reason she can’t get in touch. Maybe she’s being held somewhere, against her will?’ said Peder.
‘Or she’s in on the conspiracy,’ said Joar.
Fredrika cleared her throat.
‘There’s got to be some reason for her to go along with being declared dead, as it were. We’ve been to her flat and it looks as if it’s been standing empty for weeks.’
‘But wasn’t she missed at work?’ queried Ellen, who seldom said anything at the meetings.
‘She’s a freelance journalist,’ replied Fredrika. ‘Or trying to be. She wasn’t doing very well out of it financially, if her latest tax return’s anything to go by. Which ties in quite well with the profile of her as a drug addict, incidentally.’
‘Be that as it may, someone’s gone to a lot of trouble – with or without her consent – to build up a story round her death,’ observed Joar. ‘But why?’
‘To make the next death, that is, the Ahlbins’ so-called suicide, more plausible,’ suggested Peder.
‘Or to kill two birds with one stone?’ said Fredrika, brain-storming. ‘If we go back to our working hypothesis that Jakob was murdered to keep him quiet, maybe there was good reason to keep Karolina quiet, too. Various informants have told us how close she was to her father.’