But now it was morning and work drew him on like a mirage in the desert. The memory of the call from Johanna Ahlbin, put through by the exchange just after seven the previous evening, made his heart beat faster. She had been very brief, apologised for not getting in touch. And he had had some apologies of his own. For the fact that she had heard the news of her parents’ death via the media. For the fact that they had not got hold of her in time. She assured him that she knew they had done their best and that it was partly her own fault. Which had enabled him to resume a rather sterner tone when he informed her that the police wanted to interview her as soon as possible.
‘I’ll come in tomorrow,’ she promised.
And now it was tomorrow.
He had just put on his coat when he realised Lena was there behind him in the hall. He gave a start.
‘You scared me,’ he muttered.
She smiled, but her eyes were as lifeless as a stretch of frozen water.
‘Sorry,’ she said feebly.
Clearing her throat, she went on:
‘We’ve got to talk, Alexander.’
Had he not already known there was something awfully wrong, he would have known it then. Lena had only ever called him Alexander once before, and that was the very first time they met.
He knew instinctively that he did not want to hear what she had to say.
‘We’ll do it this evening,’ he said, opened the front door and went out onto the doorstep.
‘This evening’s fine,’ she said in a muffled voice.
He closed the door behind him without saying goodbye, and went to the car. And on the other side of the door, just as he turned the key in the ignition and revved the engine, Lena sank to the floor and started sobbing, and could not stop for a long time. In that moment at least, there was no justice for either of them.
Fredrika Bergman started to worry something was wrong, and anxiety took up permanent residence inside her mind. She was still sleeping well at nights, but sleep was bringing her neither the harmony nor the rationality she had expected, just more energy for brooding. Spencer had answered when she phoned him the previous evening, but sounded distracted and said little, beyond the unexpected news that he was going away and would not be back until Wednesday evening. He would not be able to see her before then, or to talk on the telephone. He had scarcely touched on where he was going, and had ended the call rather abruptly by wishing her a good night, saying they would speak again soon.
Naturally her pregnancy was making her emotions more volatile than usual, but Spencer’s change in behaviour unsettled her for other reasons, too. Perhaps it had been a mistake to take him round to her parents’ after all? He would hardly have suggested it himself. But on the other hand, the weekend dinner date had had a more or less miraculous effect on her mother, whose comments about the baby and its father were now exclusively positive whenever Fredrika spoke to her.
Was it perhaps the need to dampen down her anxiety that sent her off to work early that morning? At any rate, by half past seven she was already there. The team’s corridor was deserted, but she could tell that both Peder and Joar were in. She decided to go and see Peder.
‘Anything from the national CID on Sven Ljung yet?’
‘No, they’re waiting until they’ve got in some of the other information they’re trying to assemble.’
‘What are they waiting for?’
Peder sighed.
‘Bank account transactions, for example. It’s always worth checking if there’s money tied up in these things.
Fredrika went to her office, and Joar came in after her.
‘Interesting email from our friend Lazarus yesterday,’ he said, meaning Karolina Ahlbin. ‘Particularly in the light of the fact that her sister finally made herself known later on in the evening.’
‘Certainly is,’ agreed Fredrika, taking off her coat and leaning forward to switch on her computer.
‘Though it could be an attempt to put us off the track. Karolina trying to look innocent.’
‘The question is what she’d be trying to look innocent of, and to whom,’ said Fredrika.
‘Drug offences,’ supplied Joar.
‘What?’
‘New information’s come in by fax from the Swedish Embassy in Bangkok after our press conference. They’re six hours ahead of us over there.’
Fredrika took the sheet of paper Joar held out to her and read it with growing surprise.
‘Has anybody rung this Andreas Blom, who apparently interviewed her when she went to the Embassy for help?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Joar. ‘We left it until you got here.’
‘I’ll ring straight away,’ said Fredrika, reaching for the phone even as she spoke.
She glanced over the fax again as she waited for an answer. Karolina Ahlbin was evidently known to the Thai police as ‘Therese Björk’.
Maybe she preferred Therese to Lazarus, Fredrika thought exasperatedly.
Peder was given a special dispensation to postpone his session with the psychologist for a few more days. He ended the call to HR boss Margareta Berlin with a feeling of relief. She sounded more reasonable now, but he had no time to stop and analyse whether it was because he sounded different himself.
Ylva texted to say that his son was much better. He felt another surge of relief and replied that he was glad to hear it. He had scarcely put down his mobile before it bleeped again.
Why not come over and eat with me and the boys tonight, if you’ve got time? The boys are asking for you. Ylva.
Without thinking he fired off a reply:
Good idea! Will try to be there by six latest!
He regretted sending the message the instant it had gone. How the hell could he promise to be anywhere by six – he hadn’t the faintest idea how the Ahlbin case might develop in the course of the day.
Damn. His veneer of feigned cool cracked to reveal the disintegration underneath. And he thought those most forbidden of words: Nothing’s ever going to work in the long run. Not with any woman. I’ve got to make my mind up.
It was unclear to him at that moment quite what it was he had to make up his mind about. But he knew it was not a healthy sign that he viewed dinner with his own family as an imposition, an inconvenient duty. As if work was the only soul mate he wanted in his life.
Furious for no reason, he grabbed the phone again and rang one of his contacts in the CID who was dealing with the double murder on Sunday night.
‘Anything new on the Haga Park murder?’ he asked.
‘No, not a thing. So we thought we’d release the victim’s picture to the media and hope somebody recognised him.’
‘No match for the prints either?’
‘Not a whiff. But we might have something else. Or in fact – we have got something else.’
Peder was listening.
‘Sven Ljung’s car was found just outside Märsta by a woman out for an early morning walk.’
‘Bingo!’ cried Peder, with more enthusiasm in his voice than he had first intended.
‘Don’t get too bloody carried away,’ said the other detective. ‘The car was set on fire and it’d been burning a fair while by the time we got there.’
Peder’s spirits plummeted. A burnt-out car would mean very few clues.
‘Well, at least it means we know there must be some link to the case, or cases,’ he said determinedly. ‘Otherwise the person who took it would hardly have bothered to set fire to it.’
‘Probably not,’ his CID colleague agreed. ‘And there’s another thing we’ve found out.’
‘What’s that?’ Peder asked.
‘That it was very probably used as a get-away car after the security van jobs, not just the one in Uppsala but also the one the media reported in Västerås at the weekend. In the Uppsala case we’ve nothing more to go on than some witness statements that it was a silver metallic car, but in Västerås we got bits of the registration number, and they tallied with Ljung’s.’