Three murders in less than twenty-four hours. Something like that would send shock waves through any community, particularly in a country like Sweden. Sheltered and protected, a kingdom of safety and security.
A discovery had been made on the edge of a golf course not far from Drottningholm Palace. No further details had been released, but that was enough for Efraim Kiel. He realised they must have found the boys. He listened attentively to the news bulletin on the radio.
He packed his case, his movements slow and hesitant. He hated the constant travelling, the endless series of anonymous hotel rooms that served as his home. The apartment in Jerusalem was just one of many places where he stayed; it had never been his real base.
He missed having a proper home.
Sometimes he thought he had no roots at all.
He flipped his case shut. The Solomon Community in Stockholm had a new head of security. Two, if you counted Peder Rydh, who would fill the post until the summer. Poor sod. He had no idea of what was waiting for him.
Efraim gazed out at all the snow. The summer seemed so far away. How could people live in a place like this? Cold and dark. That was his overall impression of the past few days.
He had been in Stockholm before, of course. As recently as last October. His employer had decided it was time for a fresh approach. One final attempt to recruit Eden Lundell. At the time she had only just started her job as head of counter-terrorism with Säpo; by now she must be well established.
She had said no. Very clearly. Only two weeks after Efraim had made his move, Mossad’s liaison officer for Scandinavia had been called in to see the general director of Säpo, and had been castigated for the fact that his organisation had the gall to try to infiltrate Sweden’s security police. It pained him to admit it, but Säpo’s handling of the issue had been impressive. Mossad had also been surprised by Eden’s reaction; it seemed she had gone straight to her boss and put all her cards on the table.
‘There is nothing I don’t know,’ Buster Hansson had said. ‘I know that you got one of your operators to seduce Eden in London, and made her look like an idiot in front of MI5, her British employer. I know that she’s only human, and that she made a terrible mistake. But now she has finished paying for that mistake.’
Unexpected. So Eden had told her boss whom she had had a relationship with. That was a brave thing to do. It must have really hurt.
Unfortunately Buster Hansson was wrong. He had said there was nothing he didn’t know. That wasn’t true.
Efraim sat down on the bed. His plane was due to take off in less than two hours. Back to Israel. Home to Jerusalem. He thought about Eden and took a deep breath. He had been borrowing an apartment from a friend in Tel Aviv back then, when he seduced her. When they had had a relationship.
A very unfair relationship, because she had actually fallen in love, while he had just screwed her in the interests of national security.
But he had said that he loved her, and she had believed him – until she realised who he was, and what his agenda must be. The humiliation had driven her crazy; the fact that she had walked straight into his simple trap had made her lose all self-respect. For a while he had thought that she wouldn’t settle for an outburst of rage, that she would come after him, determined never to give up until she had killed him. But that wasn’t what happened. Instead her fury had been followed by total silence, and then she had left London.
Resolutely he got to his feet. He had no reason to remain in Stockholm. It was time to go home, to wait for his next assignment. This had been a turbulent ending to his stay in the Swedish capital; it would be interesting to follow the progress of the police investigation.
He had made a point of staying away from the members of the Solomon Community, visiting the centre only to do his job. Distance was important; he didn’t want to be recognised and remembered.
But that damned feeling kept on coming over him. The same feeling that had stressed him out when it looked as if they weren’t going to find a suitable candidate for the post of head of security. It hovered in the air, hanging over him like an omen of impending doom, an Armageddon that was being held at bay only by the beautiful winter weather that had blessed the city today.
He tried to shake off the sense of unease as he picked up his suitcase and left the room. He went down to the lobby to check out.
The receptionist smiled.
‘There’s a message for you,’ she said, handing him an envelope.
Slowly he put down the case. He stood there holding the letter. Who knew he was here? A few people from the Solomon Community, but they wouldn’t contact him in writing. They would phone him.
Efraim moved away from the desk. With his back to the receptionist, he opened the sealed envelope.
It held only a simple white card. He read the brief message.
What the hell?
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.
He read the message over and over again.
‘Excuse me, did you want to check out?’
He turned around in a daze.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I’m staying.’
He slipped the card into his pocket, knowing that he wouldn’t need to look at it again to remember what it said.
I heard you were in town.
So am I.
The Paper Boy
Children’s bodies, laid to rest in the cold snow. Fredrika Bergman was standing a short distance away with Alex, trying yet again to understand how someone could believe they had the right to harm other people. Take on the role of the supreme judge, presiding over life and death.
The life and death of children.
She could hardly remember how she and Alex had managed to get from the interviews with the boys’ mothers in Östermalm to the deserted golf course at Drottningholm.
‘I don’t understand this,’ Alex said.
‘Who does?’
‘What the hell are these paper bags supposed to mean?’
When the bags had been removed, there was no longer any doubt. They had found Simon Eisenberg and Abraham Goldmann.
‘They must have some significance for the murderer,’ Fredrika said. ‘But I have no idea what it might be.’
Sometimes a murderer would try to distance himself from his crime by covering the victim’s face, depersonalising him or her. Could it be something along those lines?
She looked at the bags. Brown, sturdy. With big faces drawn on the front.
‘It seems as if whoever shot the boys wanted to tell us something,’ Alex said. ‘With the bags, I mean. Have you checked if there’s anything written on them?’ he asked one of the CSIs.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing. The only thing of interest is the face on each one. I’ll take them back to the lab and check them over.’
They could always hope, of course. With a bit of luck the killer would have suffered an attack of megalomania, and would have left his or her fingerprints all over the thick paper. Or used a very rare pen that would be easy to trace. Somehow.
Fredrika was very downhearted. They wouldn’t find a single thing on those bags; she felt it in every fibre of her body.
‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’ she said. ‘For example, how did the boys get here?’
‘Good question. You can see the boys’ footprints,’ the CSI said, pointing. ‘They ran quite a distance through the forest over there; we’ve been able to follow them all the way to a narrow track that branches off Lovövägen. The most likely scenario is that they managed to escape from their abductor, but I’ve no idea how that happened. Hopefully the forensic pathologist will be able to tell us more on the basis of their injuries.’
Fredrika shuddered. She couldn’t take her eyes off the children’s bare feet in the sparkling snow. Who knew what they had been forced to endure before they managed to get away? And in the end they had both been shot dead.