The baby had never been born. Because of Spencer’s weakness its mother, Josefine, decided to abort it, which was still considered a sin in those days. By some irony of fate, or was it as a punishment, Spencer and his wife never had any children of their own. Three miscarriages were followed by years of fruitless trying. Until at last they had to face the fact that there would be no children. Perhaps it was even a kind of blessing, for by that stage they had long since stopped wanting any.
Then Fredrika came into his life. And he had actually let her down, too.
Spencer felt a lump come into his throat at the thought of her. That beautiful and intelligent woman who could have had who the hell she liked – if she had only believed in herself a bit more – but who had always come back to him.
Every time. Every time she came back to me.
Perhaps he should have said no. But then she should, too. And she could definitely have refrained from coming back.
We just couldn’t, he thought. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to say no to something that was so much better than what we already had. Loneliness.
‘It’s some years now since I stopped missing my daughter,’ Therese Björk’s mother said simply.
As if it was the most natural thing in the world. As if there was some dividing line where parenthood ends and something else takes its place. Estrangement and discord.
‘I do still love her,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘And I cry in the evenings because she isn’t with me any longer. But I don’t miss her. She’s made that impossible, you see.’
Fredrika would really have preferred to go round and see Ingrid Björk personally. On reflection it felt like the wrong choice to have yielded to her impulse and picked up the phone. But Ingrid Björk’s tone indicated that she did not mind. She could cope with a conversation about the most important person in her life over the phone.
I’m damn sure I couldn’t, Fredrika thought wearily. I don’t seem to be able to cope with anything much at the moment.
‘When did things start to go wrong?’
Ingrid Björk thought about it.
‘Oh, early on, when she was in lower secondary school,’ she said confidently.
‘That early?’
‘Yes, I think so. Therese was such a restless spirit; there were things that seemed to leave her no peace. Her dad and I did our best to support her. But I’m sure it wasn’t enough.’
She went on talking about her daughter. About the little girl who grew up into an irresponsible teenager, out of control, and the body invaded by a disturbed mind. About her first boyfriend who led her astray, and her first visit to the child psychiatrist. Years with a succession of psychologists and therapists, none of them ultimately able to save either the daughter, or her parents’ marriage. She tried to describe how she had struggled to save her daughter from going under irrevocably, but was finally forced to admit that the project was doomed and she would never get her daughter back.
‘That’s the way I see it,’ she said gravely. ‘As if she’s not mine any longer, because she belongs to her addiction.’
‘But she’s registered as living with you, isn’t she?’ Fredrika queried.
‘I’m sure she is, but it makes no difference. I haven’t seen her for ages. She stopped getting in touch when she realised she’d be getting no more money.’
The words tore at Fredrika. Words intimating that children could be lost to you even if they were still alive were something alien in the world she knew.
‘Why have you rung to ask me all these questions?’
Ingrid Björk’s question broke into her thoughts.
With agile fingers, Fredrika extracted the file from the bottom of the heap on her desk. The copy of the autopsy report on the person initially believed to be Karolina Ahlbin.
‘Because I’m afraid I know exactly where your daughter is at this moment,’ she said in a subdued tone.
There was a rather febrile atmosphere in the Den when Fredrika came in at the last minute and took a seat at the table.
‘Before this interview with Johanna Ahlbin I want us all to try to identify the gaps and question marks in what we know, the ones we think she can help to clarify,’ said Alex. ‘I also want us all, as a team, to establish if there’s anything we need to be aware of in the interview, any advantages we don’t want to fritter away.’
‘I’ve been able to identify the woman we initially took to be Karolina Ahlbin,’ Fredrika announced, afraid Alex was going to race ahead at the same pace at which he had started, leaving her no opening.
The others looked up in surprise.
‘The woman who died of an overdose almost two weeks ago was called Therese Björk. I’ve just been talking to her mother on the phone.’
‘Therese Björk?’ echoed Joar. ‘The name Karolina Ahlbin was using in Thailand?’
‘Yes.’
Peder shook his head as if trying to make everything fall into place.
‘What the hell does this mean?’
‘Maybe that Karolina and Johanna staged the whole drama together,’ suggested Alex. ‘She’d hardly have given the Thai authorities that particular name otherwise.’
‘But she didn’t,’ Fredrika snapped.
‘Didn’t what?’
‘She didn’t give that name herself; it was the Embassy staff who confronted her with the details, which they got from the Thai authorities who’d seized the false passport.’
‘But why would she have a false passport with those details in it if she didn’t know who Therese Björk was?’ asked Peder, looking lost.
‘I don’t know,’ Fredrika said with a look of exasperation. ‘Karolina flatly denied to the Embassy people that she had ever stayed at the hotel the police raided.’
‘So you reckon she wasn’t part of the conspiracy against Jakob Ahlbin, but more of a victim?’ Joar said.
‘Something like that,’ Fredrika said. ‘We’d already considered the possibility, hadn’t we? That someone wanted to get her out of the way, I mean, but failed. That the intention all along was for her to die, but the murderer wasn’t able to do the job, for some reason.’
‘So you’re saying someone killed Therese Björk specifically in order to have Karolina Ahlbin declared dead in Sweden, while Karolina was put out of action where she was, in Thailand?’ said Alex, sounding unconvinced.
Fredrika drank some water and nodded slowly.
‘But why?’ thundered Alex. ‘Why?’
‘That’s just what I think you should ask Johanna,’ said Fredrika. ‘She’s the one who made the misidentification that set all this in motion, after all.’
Peder shook his head again.
‘What about Sven Ljung, then?’ he said. ‘How do he and his car fit into all this?’
‘Do they need to?’ Fredrika persisted. ‘Maybe it’s just as we first thought, and these are two entirely unrelated cases.’
‘No way,’ said Joar. ‘There are just too many connections.’
‘But are there, really?’ asked a sceptical Fredrika.
Her voice died away at the sound of Alex’s fingers drumming on the table.
‘There don’t need to be that many for us to find them hard to ignore,’ he said, his eyes on Fredrika. ‘We’re pretty sure Sven Ljung’s car was involved in the Yusuf murder up at the university, and in the security van robberies in Uppsala and Västerås. And we know Yusuf was a friend of the man Muhammad in Skärholmen, and he had been in touch with Jakob Ahlbin.’
‘Who was found dead in his own flat by none other than Sven Ljung,’ finished Fredrika with a sigh. ‘I know, I know. He must have something to do with all this, I just don’t get what.’