‘What have the national CID had to say about Sven Ljung?’ Joar asked Peder with a frown. ‘How long are they thinking of waiting before they apply for an arrest warrant?’
Peder’s face darkened as Joar addressed him.
Hmm, thought Fredrika. They still can’t stand each other.
‘They rang back just before the meeting,’ said Peder. ‘They reckon they’ll have everything ready by the end of the morning, then they’ll bring him in for a first interview this afternoon.’
‘From now on I want feedback on every move the CID make on this,’ Alex said doggedly, adding: ‘Peder, I want you to ask to sit in on the interview.’
With the enthusiasm of a ragamuffin who has been tossed a large coin for opening a gate, Peder said he would ring them the minute the meeting was over.
‘As far as interviewing Johanna Ahlbin goes,’ Alex went on, ‘I’d like Fredrika to come with me and take the lead on that.’
Everything went quiet.
Just like it’s always been, thought Fredrika. Stony silence whenever I get given some especially juicy task.
She knew what Alex would have to add for equilibrium to be restored, and sure enough, it was only a matter of seconds before he went on.
‘The primary reason for that, of course, is that it seems important to have a female colleague present when interviewing a young woman like Johanna.’
Fredrika kept her eyes on Peder and Joar, awaiting their reaction. None came. It was only when Alex started speaking again that she thought she saw Peder’s face twitch.
‘But on top of that, Fredrika is as competent an interviewer as anyone else in this room. Just in case there’s anybody here who misunderstood what I said to begin with.’
Fredrika turned to Alex in astonishment, and he gave her a crooked grin.
Things are looking up, she thought, and the prospect made her feel quite dizzy.
Automatically, as in any other situation that made her feel happy or sad, she put her hand to her stomach. Only to realise that it was a long time since she had last felt the baby move.
Everything’s fine, she thought quickly to stem the surging tide of worry she had just unleashed. It’s just asleep.
So she forced herself to smile at Alex, despite her rising sense of apprehension and her continuing concern about why Spencer had gone off at such short notice.
The phone in her pocket vibrated silently, forcing her to pull herself together. She went briskly out of the room to take the call. It was the librarian in Farsta, ringing back.
‘Sorry it took so long,’ the lady apologised.
‘No problem,’ Fredrika forced herself to say.
‘I’ve been through the lists for the time in question,’ the woman went on, and cleared her throat.
Fredrika waited tensely.
‘Though I’m not sure this can be the person you want,’ the librarian said doubtfully. ‘It seems to have been a middle-aged lady at the computer you asked about.’
‘Oh,’ Fredrika said hesitantly. ‘Have you got a name or date of birth?’
‘I’ve got both,’ the librarian said, with evident satisfaction. ‘The woman was born in January 1947 and her name is Marja. Marja Ahlbin.’
Fredrika rushed back into the Den and stopped Alex, who was the last person leaving the room.
‘It was Marja Ahlbin who’d booked the computer in Farsta that the email was sent from.’
‘Good God,’ exclaimed Alex.
Fredrika looked him straight in the eye.
‘What if we’ve misjudged the whole wretched thing,’ she said. ‘What if Jakob really did shoot his wife, but in self-defence, and then couldn’t live with what he’d done and wrote the suicide note?’
‘And where would Karolina’s death fit into that scenario?’
‘I don’t know,’ Fredrika admitted, starting a mental count of the number of times she had said those words in the past few days.
‘We don’t know a goddamn thing,’ snarled Alex. ‘And I’m getting mighty fed up with always being one step behind in this mess.’
‘And Marja’s possible involvement in the threats to Jakob?’
‘I haven’t the least bloody idea at the moment,’ Alex muttered.
Fredrika frowned.
‘I’ll check that out, too,’ she said, sounding as determined as Alex had done.
‘What?’ he asked, confused.
‘We know where the other emails that weren’t from Tony Svensson’s home computer were sent from,’ Fredrika replied. ‘A Seven-Eleven convenience store. I’ll check with Marja’s phone provider to see if her mobile was in use in or near either of those locations at the appropriate times.’
‘You do that,’ said Alex. ‘And try to come up with the answers double quick. We need plenty of data to back us up when we confront Johanna Ahlbin.’
‘I know,’ said Fredrika. ‘Because she’s the only one who can solve this case for us, that’s for sure. Or her sister.’
You seldom got a breakthrough early in an investigation, Peder Rydh had learned that over the years. But there was something very special about some of the cases he had worked on since he joined Alex’s group. Something that made them develop very quickly, and then explode into an orgy of loose threads and leftover pieces of puzzle.
I like it, he thought reflexively. Hell, I don’t think I could live without it.
He made sure he didn’t even glance in Joar’s direction as he went into his room and shut the door. Following Alex’s instructions, he rang his contact in the national CID to ask how close they were to an arrest, and said he would like to be present at the interviews when they took place.
‘We’re bringing him in after lunch,’ said his contact. ‘We’ve had surveillance on him since last night; he and his wife seem to be lurking in their flat.’
‘Neither of them been out since yesterday?’
‘Nope, doesn’t look like it.’
‘Well at least he’s not trying to flee the country.’
The CID man changed tack.
‘We’ve had the information on Sven Ljung’s private finances that we were waiting for,’ he said in a voice indicating there was more news to come.
Peder waited.
‘It looks as if our friend Sven had real problems in the financial department in recent years. The flat’s mortgaged up to the hilt – he remortgaged in December, in fact – and on top of all that he owes various loan companies a fair whack. He and his wife sold a holiday house two years ago and managed to make quite a packet, but that money seems to have disappeared.’
Peder listened attentively. Debts, Money. Always bloody money. Was it that simple this time, too?
‘But what do they live on, he and his wife?’
‘Their pensions, basically.’
‘Nothing to splash about, in other words,’ observed Peder.
‘That’s putting it mildly,’ said the other investigator. ‘And his wife’s got no assets to speak of, of course.’
‘But they did have that house,’ Peder reminded him.
‘They certainly did,’ chuckled the other man. ‘And they made a decent profit there, a million kronor. And that money’s all gone, too.’
That’s not all, Peder was thinking. We know where all the money’s gone, we just can’t remember at the moment.
‘We’re working on the hypothesis that Sven got into this whole robbery thing because his finances needed a boost and for no other reason,’ his colleague said.
‘And what about the murder of that Yusuf, up at the university?’
‘I suppose they wanted to get rid of their robber so they could brush it all under the carpet,’ came the simple answer.
Too simple.
‘Which “they” would that be?’ Peder asked dubiously.
The other man was starting to lose patience.
‘Well, of course we don’t think Sven Ljung set all this up on his own,’ he said in a slow, exaggerated way, as if talking to a child and not a trusted colleague.
‘Have you come up with names for any of the other people involved yet?’