‘That bloody Viggo Tuvesson from the Norrmalm force isn’t here either,’ thundered Alex Recht when they were all assembled in the Den with cups of coffee in their hands at about half past five that evening. ‘We’ve nothing on him beyond the fact that he’s been in touch with Tony Svensson now and then. And the fact that he’s Sven and Elsie’s son.’
‘He couldn’t give any plausible explanation for his contact with Tony Svensson though, could he?’ Fredrika added.
Alex muttered something inaudible and gave her a hard stare.
‘Shouldn’t you go home now?’
She shook her head.
‘No, I’m fine. I’ll stay a bit longer.’
Peder was fiddling with his watch and looking worried.
‘Do you need to get home?’ Alex asked him.
Peder looked dejected.
‘Well I was supposed to be eating with Ylva and the boys tonight, but…’
‘Go!’ Alex bellowed, making his younger colleague jump. ‘Go home and eat. I’ll ring if I need you back.’
Light feet bore Peder out of the room and he shut the door behind him.
Two seconds later he opened it again.
‘Thanks.’
‘Do we think we can now say for certain why Jakob Ahlbin died?’ Joar asked rhetorically.
‘No,’ said Fredrika, just as Alex said ‘Yes’.
They looked at each other in surprise.
‘He was murdered to keep him quiet, just as you thought,’ Alex said irritably and glared, but Fredrika shook her head. ‘The only question is who did it.’
‘But what about Marja?’ she objected. ‘Why did she have to die as well? I mean, we’re also working on the hypothesis that she was part of Vinterman’s network.’
Alex looked bedraggled. In conjunction with the CID he had had to apply for immediate surveillance of Ragnar Vinterman, to make sure he did not try to get away if and when he found out Sven Ljung had been arrested.
‘Maybe Marja’s death wasn’t intentional,’ Alex said sternly.
Fredrika pursed her lips and said nothing.
‘OK, let’s go back over this,’ Joar suggested firmly. ‘Who do we think had a motive for murdering Jakob, or Jakob and Marja?’
‘Either the Vinterman network or one of the daughters,’ said Fredrika.
‘You mean Karolina?’ said Alex.
‘No, I mean either of them. I’m keeping an open mind until we’ve heard the other version.’
‘All right…’ began Alex, but was interrupted by Ellen’s knock at the door.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said, ‘but there’s an urgent fax from the Thai police.’
Alex read it with a look of concern.
‘Damn. The Thai authorities are pretty sure Karolina Ahlbin left Bangkok yesterday evening on a direct flight to Stockholm. She was travelling on someone else’s passport. They got some information when they raided a known people smuggler who operates out of Bangkok.’
Anxiety spread through the room.
‘What does that mean for us?’ Fredrika asked quietly.
‘That if they’re right, she’s already back in Sweden,’ Alex said dully. ‘And that whatever her role in all this has been, she’s no doubt extremely worked up. Heaven help Johanna when she finds her.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Joar under his breath.
‘But where will she go?’ Fredrika asked agitatedly. ‘She’s more or less on the run, wanted for serious crimes.’
Alex gave her a long look.
‘We’ve no choice now, we’ll have to sound the alert and issue her description. For her own sake, if nothing else.’
Time had finally caught up with them, and that was all there was to it. And she knew Sven would try until the very last minute to avoid shouldering the responsibility he would have to take. So Elsie stood up resolutely from the kitchen table where she had been sitting since the police took Sven away, and went into the hall.
I should have done the right thing ages ago, she thought grimly. But they say it’s never too late to put right what you once did wrong.
As she struggled into her heavy winter coat, her eye fell on one of the family photos hanging on the wall. It had amazed her that the police had been in their flat three times, and failed to recognise Viggo in the picture. But then, Viggo had been a different man then, a man with an undamaged face.
Elsie felt like weeping.
His role must be clear to them now, she realised, as she pulled on her woolly hat. Even if they didn’t know precisely what he did, they must know that he had a part in all these horrors.
She stroked the picture with trembling fingers. Once upon a time they’d been a proper family, a unit in which everyone cared about everyone else and wanted what was best for them. But it seemed so long ago, now. They had long since lost Måns to his addiction, and as for Viggo… She let out a heavy sigh. He had always chosen the more difficult path. It had surprised them that he wanted to join the police, but they were also baffled by his reluctance to let the doctors try to do something about the scar that so disfigured his face.
‘It’s my trademark,’ he told them when the matter first came up between them.
‘Says who?’ Elsie asked doubtfully.
‘The one I love,’ he replied, and then turned away and got on with something else.
It had been hopeless trying to get any more out of him. He refused to say who he had met, and was adamant that he had no intention of letting his parents meet her. Months went by and became years. They heard no more about her, and assumed it had ended.
But Elsie knew her son and over time a suspicion started to take root. With a pounding heart she had posted herself near the front entrance to his block of flats last summer, and her suspicions were confirmed when he emerged hand in hand with a woman Elsie would have recognised from half a mile away.
‘Nothing ever comes free with that woman,’ she had tried telling her son. ‘Don’t go thinking she’s who she pretends to be. Her mind is sick, Viggo. As sick as they come.’
But he refused to listen and said he had a right to go his own way. What was a modern-day mother supposed to say to that?
Elsie resolutely put her keys in her handbag and opened the front door. She hoped the police hadn’t all gone home for the day. Above all she hoped that the woman detective, the pregnant one, would still be there. She seemed to understand things even without Elsie saying them.
I thought I was looking after them, sparing them from the worst, she thought wearily. When in fact I was just paving the way for our downfall.
She stepped onto the landing and raised her eyes.
She heard herself gasp to see who was standing there.
‘You?’ she just had time to say before surprisingly strong arms bundled her back into the flat.
The snow that had fallen in the course of the afternoon made the road surface slippery, and if he had given it a thought, he might have pulled over and spent the night at a hotel. But his thoughts were locked onto the one thing that felt worth dwelling on just then – the fact that he was going to seek out his father-in-law, thump his fist on the table and be rid of that tyranny at last – and he kept driving. He knew the country roads of Småland; they changed little over the years. He passed through villages and small towns and felt tears come to his eyes as memories he had thought gone for ever forced their way to the surface, punching through his soul.
I’ve been a fool.
He had made two important calls before setting off from Uppsala. The first was to his employer, saying he would not be in for a few days. The other was to Eva, to tell her that he would be leaving her when he got back from his trip. He had been surprised by her silence, and her closing remark had stunned him:
‘Aren’t you going to miss me at all, Spencer?’
Miss.