‘I went to university in Tel Aviv,’ he said curtly. ‘I did another two years in the army, and that was it.’
Alex looked at the picture again. Admittedly it was always difficult to gauge how old someone else was, but he thought both Gideon and Saul looked older than the usual age for military service.
‘And you were also in the army?’ Fredrika asked Daphne.
‘Yes, but only for a few years, like Saul.’
That didn’t match what Gideon and Carmen had said; they had implied that the Goldmanns’ military career had been longer.
Alex looked away from the photographs.
‘Abraham must have been impressed by your background,’ he said.
He smiled as he spoke, hoping to convey warmth.
‘Absolutely – he was fascinated,’ Daphne said.
‘Did he have any thoughts of going into the army?’ Alex asked, thinking that Israelis in particular were likely to react more strongly than others to the fact that Sweden had abolished military service, and had virtually no defence left to speak of.
‘He was too young for that kind of talk,’ Saul said harshly.
But he called himself the Warrior.
‘There’s an online forum called Super Troopers,’ Fredrika said. ‘It’s for young people; are you aware of it?’
‘Of course,’ Daphne replied. ‘Abraham was often on there chatting to others his own age.’
‘It was a good site,’ Saul said, sitting up even straighter. ‘It encouraged competitiveness; it was character-building, good for morale.’
‘So you monitored Abraham’s online activities?’
‘What do you think? He was ten years old – of course we did,’ Daphne said.
And Alex believed her. These were no ordinary parents. They were coaches who had seen it as their duty to prepare their son for adult life, and to do so with a firm hand.
‘Why did he call himself the Warrior?’ Fredrika asked.
Daphne smiled for the first time. It was a brittle smile, painful to see.
‘Because that was his grandfather’s nickname, and Abraham really looked up to him.’
Her face crumpled, and Alex thought he was going to see her cry for the first time. It didn’t happen.
‘Did you or Abraham have any enemies?’ he said.
‘You asked the same question yesterday,’ Daphne said.
‘And now I’m asking it again.’
‘No.’
‘No past disputes or injuries festering away?’
‘No.’
So what had happened? Had the boys been picked up by someone who had taken them just because he was crazy? The fact that they had probably known the driver made that unlikely, and suggested that the crime had some personal motive.
It could of course be a combination of the two. The killer could be driven by both insanity and the desire for revenge.
But if someone felt such hatred that it could lead to murder, the people involved usually had an idea of the reason behind it. Daphne and Saul Goldmann didn’t seem to have a clue.
Alex felt as if the ground beneath his feet was giving way. His thoughts went back to the case he had investigated with Fredrika and Peder during that summer when it wouldn’t stop raining. When Lilian Sebastiansson had disappeared. On that occasion they had been hunting a true psychopath, someone to whom rituals were of great importance. A killer hell bent on avenging past wrongs so diffuse that the parents of the children who went missing had no idea what they were supposed to be guilty of.
Were they back in that same place now? In the hands of a mentally ill person whose motives were unclear?
He hoped to God that wasn’t the case, and that this was something different.
‘I’m going to be honest with you,’ he said. ‘I don’t think Abraham and Simon were taken at random. The perpetrator was after one or both of them. Probably both, as they were killed in the same way. I also think they were murdered by the person who picked them up on the way to their tennis session. What I need from you and Simon’s parents are more leads. Who has done this to you?’
His words settled over Saul and Daphne like a wet cloud. He hadn’t sounded angry, hadn’t accused them of anything. He had spoken clearly and to the point: he and Fredrika needed their help. That was all there was to it.
‘What about your business? Can you think of any disputes or arguments you’ve been involved in?’
Daphne and Saul looked at one another.
‘No,’ Daphne said, her voice weaker now. ‘No, nothing like that.’
‘Think carefully,’ Fredrika said. ‘It could be something that didn’t seem all that serious at the time, but had major consequences for someone else.’
The Goldmanns thought hard, digging in their past for an explanation for what had happened.
Alex didn’t think they were lying, but he was concerned that they might be withholding information for private reasons, making their own decisions as to what may or may not be relevant to the investigation. Few things were more dangerous.
He directed the conversation back to the Eisenberg family.
‘So you all moved to Sweden at the same time.’
‘It was pure coincidence.’
Saul’s comment came quickly. Too quickly. It was very clear that he realised he had made a mistake.
‘So the move wasn’t a joint project?’
‘No.’
Once again a response that wasn’t a lie, but wasn’t the whole truth either. There was something there, Alex could feel it. In the past. Hidden away, buried in Israel. The question was how they were going to get at it if nobody was prepared to talk.
Fredrika moved on to what was intended to be the final key question.
‘Can you tell me who the Paper Boy is?’
Daphne didn’t move a muscle.
But Saul… He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. Every scrap of colour drained from his face.
Then he pulled himself together. The colour returned, his breathing slowed down. But it was too late. Both Alex and Fredrika had seen his reaction.
‘Why do you ask?’ he said.
Alex leaned back in his chair.
‘Answer our question first, then I’ll answer yours.’
Saul’s body language was defensive now.
‘He’s a fairy-tale character. An Israeli myth. He doesn’t exist.’
His jaws were clamped together as he ground out the words.
‘Good,’ Alex said.
‘Why do you ask?’ Saul said again, louder this time.
‘Because that’s what Simon called himself on the Super Troopers forum,’ Fredrika said. ‘That’s all.’
Her answer calmed Saul, but not Alex. Because now he had two leads to follow. First of all he wanted to know why the Eisenberg and Goldmann families had moved to Sweden, and secondly he wanted to know more about the so-called Paper Boy.
Both questions led to Israel.
Food from Thailand and lingonberry juice from Kivik. An extremely late lunch. It was two o’clock before they found time to eat, and Fredrika Bergman was practically screaming with hunger. She and Alex shut themselves in the Snakes’ Nest with a takeaway from one of the many Thai restaurants that had opened in the streets around Police HQ. She had no idea who Alex had stolen the juice from, nor did she care.
The aroma of curry spread around the room as soon as they opened the plastic boxes.
‘This isn’t exactly environmentally friendly,’ Fredrika said as she put down the messy lid.
‘You’re not wrong,’ Alex agreed.
Then they settled down to their lunch and forgot about the environment. They had two murders to solve; someone else could worry about the greenhouse effect, dead zones in the Baltic and a whole load of other stuff that Fredrika vaguely felt she cared too little about.
They now had food in their bellies and silence in the room. Silence, but an absence of calm. They had too much to do, too many questions to answer.
Two murders.
Or three, if they included the teacher.
Their efforts to track down the person who had killed the boys out on Lovön had produced sparse results. CSI thought they had an idea of what kind of vehicle had been parked in the spot where they were assuming the boys had been released: a van. A vehicle of that type had been reported stolen the day before the boys were abducted, but it appeared to have vanished into thin air; the number plate hadn’t been picked up at any of the pay stations on the city’s toll roads. They had tried to find potential witnesses on Lovön, but no one had noticed a van around the time the boys went missing, or when they were shot. It had taken a while to find the bodies in the snow and set up roadblocks on the island, so the killer had had plenty of time to get away.