He had asked the receptionist who had brought it in, demanded a description, but he had been unable to get anything out of her. She just couldn’t remember, nor could any other member of staff. The lobby was covered by CCTV, but they refused to let him look at the film. If that was how they wanted it, Efraim was happy to play along. He knew how to get hold of information without first asking permission; when evening came he would take what he wanted.
Unconsciously he was heading towards the Solomon Community. They would be surprised to see him; they thought he had gone home.
The short lines on the card inside the envelope were still reverberating in his brain. The message was written in Hebrew, and was clearly meant for Efraim’s eyes only.
Feeling frustrated, he increased his speed. His Säpo followers kept pace like nonchalant shadows, naively convinced that he hadn’t noticed them.
What the hell did this person who called himself the Paper Boy want?
Efraim had several problems that he wasn’t yet sure how to solve. He had to find out more about the murders that had shaken the Solomon Community. See how far the police had got, what they knew about the three deaths. But he had no sources within the Swedish police. Eden was a last resort, of course, but she was with Säpo, and had nothing to do with these investigations.
The very thought of Eden stressed him out.
The Paper Boy; was he a mutual acquaintance? He didn’t think so.
Efraim rarely felt uneasy. Years of training and experience had prepared him for most of what life had to offer, but not the sort of challenges the Paper Boy posed.
He would have to make sure that he didn’t lose his grip. The mere fact that he was actually thinking of the Paper Boy as a real person was ominous.
You don’t exist, he thought, clutching the note in his pocket.
Although he couldn’t be certain.
He knew of two Paper Boys; it depended which of them had contacted him. The one who was a myth, or the one who had once existed.
He had reached the community centre on Nybrogatan. He stopped in the street and stared at the door of the Solomon school, where the teacher had been killed. There were no traces of yesterday’s drama to be seen; last night’s storm had very efficiently swept away all the bloodstained snow. He moved closer to the building, examining the facade.
It didn’t take him long to find the spot where the bullet had penetrated the wall. It wasn’t there now, of course; the police had removed it and taken it away. But the hole was still there, and it was lower down than Efraim had expected.
If the killer had been lying on the roof on the opposite side of the street, he would have had a pretty good chance of being able to see what he was doing and to hit his target – assuming that he was a good shot, which Efraim took as read. Otherwise no one would attempt this kind of attack. Not in the middle of a snowstorm.
He squatted down, ran his hand over the wall. Josephine had been surrounded by children when she was killed. Shot in the back. Had she been standing upright, or bending down? Perhaps she had been about to kneel down to help one of the children with something? The newspapers hadn’t given any details, but nor could they be expected to.
Was the bullet really meant for Josephine?
Or for one of the children?
Reluctantly his thoughts returned to the Paper Boy.
Was it you who did this?
He was overwhelmed by a sense of impotence. Had he misunderstood who the message was from?
Efraim had no specialist knowledge of the Paper Boy, but two things he did know:
First of all, he always left a calling card when he had taken a victim.
And secondly, he took only children.
Concentrating on the pattern of footprints and impressions left by shoes in the snow quickly became confusing. It was possible to track two sets of children’s bare feet, and one set of adult boots. Size 43, so probably a man’s. CSI thought they had found the place where the boys had managed to escape from their abductor, but how the children had got there remained a mystery.
Fredrika Bergman frowned as she looked at the documents in front of her: a map, photographs and scribbled notes.
A theory was beginning to take shape. The boys had been taken to Lovön by car. At the moment it wasn’t clear whether the perpetrator had a specific link to the island; nor did they know where he and the children had spent the night. CSI had found evidence to suggest that a larger vehicle had been in the area where they thought the boys had escaped. The width of the tyre tracks and the size of the wheelbase indicated that this was some kind of van.
So the boys had been driven to the spot.
But how had they managed to escape?
Fredrika just couldn’t work it out, but it must have happened somehow. The boys had fled and sought refuge among the trees; it looked as if they had run around in circles. In certain places they appeared to have knelt down, or even lain on the snow beneath the trees. They had presumably hidden behind the tree trunks, watching out for whoever was chasing them. But why had neither of them got away? If only they had set off in different directions, then the killer wouldn’t have been able to go after both of them at the same time.
Fredrika reminded herself that they were children. And that they had been barefoot, frozen, exhausted and terrified.
They must have been so cold.
She looked at her watch. Their first team meeting was due to begin shortly.
Reluctantly she had begun to take an interest in the boys’ fathers, the men who had driven around and around the city searching for their sons while the mothers stayed in the community centre, calling friends and acquaintances.
Both men worked in security. Simon’s father was a specialist in IT security, Abraham’s in personal protection. Fredrika rapidly came to the conclusion that she was in the wrong job. Abraham’s father had successfully built up a company with something in the region of fifteen employees, offering security packages to everyone from embassies to small and medium-sized enterprises. Fredrika glanced at the homepage and wondered what kind of background you needed to start a business like that. She must remember to ask.
Simon’s mother was an architect, while Abraham’s mother worked for her husband. That was all Fredrika managed to find out.
Both families had a fascinating background. They had moved to Sweden in 2002; again, this was something worth asking about. Why would someone move from Israel to Stockholm?
She found the pictures the parents had given to the police while they still believed that the children were alive; she gazed at the boys with their serious expressions for a long time.
Now they were gone.
She felt as if the photographs were burning her fingers. Who would target children, hunt them down and shoot them?
A thought came and went, and disappeared so quickly that she didn’t have time to catch it. She put down the pictures of the boys and dug out the photos of the place where they had been found.
They were missing something vital. Something the tracks in the snow were telling them.
Alex opened her door. ‘We’re about to make a start,’ he said.
She got up and followed him down the corridor, still thinking about those footprints in the snow. Eventually she had to try to put her thoughts into words.
‘Alex, the boys’ footprints in the snow.’
He looked at her.
‘Yes?’
They stopped outside the meeting room – no longer the Lions’ Den. They were one floor higher up these days, and the room was known as the Snakes’ Nest. Fredrika presumed someone had come up with the name in connection with a Christmas party or some similar occasion; she much preferred the Lions’ Den.
‘I think we’re on the wrong track – no pun intended.’