Silence.
Efraim pictured Peder, cursing his own stupidity.
‘Oh right, yes, of course,’ he said, his voice a little steadier. ‘Yes, I have.’
‘In that case, let’s try again. Have you or have you not spoken to the police?’
‘I have spoken to the police.’
‘Okay. What about?’
Efraim wished Peder had been sitting in front of him; that would have made things so much easier, both in terms of frightening him and reading his reactions.
‘About… about what you said.’
‘Which was?’
What kind of fucking amateur had they appointed as head of security? Efraim had met children who were better liars than Peder Rydh.
‘The bag. You wanted to know more about the bag. So I asked.’
‘Who did you speak to?’
‘Alex Recht.’
‘Good. And what did you find out?’
‘He didn’t say anything about the paper bag.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘He wouldn’t tell me whether it was of any significance in the investigation; he said it was too early.’
‘But the police came and collected the bag, didn’t they?’
Peder hesitated.
‘They did, yes.’
‘So Alex Recht wouldn’t tell you anything about the paper bag; did he say anything else that might be of interest to me?’
A longer hesitation this time.
‘Only what’s already in the news.’
Efraim frowned. He hadn’t checked the news since he got back from the cinema, and to be honest it was a fairly pointless exercise; he didn’t have a decent translation program to work with.
‘For obvious reasons I find it difficult to follow the Swedish news,’ he said. ‘What exactly are you referring to?’
‘This business about the gun.’
Efraim froze.
‘The gun?’
There was a rushing noise inside his head, and his pulse rate had increased to an alarming level.
‘The boys were shot with the same gun as the teacher,’ Peder said.
Impossible.
Impossible, impossible, impossible.
He forced himself to answer Peder.
‘Oh yes, I knew about that.’
Then he ended the conversation with a promise to call Peder again over the weekend.
He stood there with his mobile in his hand. This was worse than he had thought. If the children had been shot with the same gun as the teacher, then that ought to mean that they had been killed by the same perpetrator.
But they hadn’t.
Because Efraim Kiel knew who had shot the boys, and that person had had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of the teacher.
CONCLUSION: FRAGMENT IV
The snow is falling heavily, desperate to bury all evil beneath its blanket of white. The inspector leaves the apartment with the woman who has lost the love of her life and one of her children.
‘I was never meant to have it all,’ she says when they are standing on the pavement.
He has no idea what to say. He knows nothing about her past and her personal life apart from what he has heard from others.
He does know that her story contains elements of darkness that she does not wish to share with anyone else. Soon she will have to be interviewed about what has happened, fill in the gaps for the investigators. Because somewhere in Stockholm, there is a killer on the loose.
‘I thought we’d got him,’ the inspector says eventually.
The snow chills his face, and he feels like crying out there in the street.
Because he doesn’t understand what went wrong.
When she doesn’t respond, he says:
‘I can’t make any sense of this. When you feel up to telling us what you know…’
He breaks off as she turns her back on him and walks away.
‘Hang on a minute!’
He hurries to catch up with her, places a hand on her shoulder and almost slips in the snow.
‘Let go of me.’
Her voice is calm, but there is no misunderstanding the steel in her tone. He has the feeling that if he doesn’t let go, he will die.
‘Listen to me,’ he says.
Begs.
Pleads.
Because in a world where all is chaos, only pleading remains.
‘You must realise that I can’t simply let you walk away.’
He glances back at his colleagues, waiting by the door. Like him, they are in shock at what they have seen and experienced. If necessary, he will not hesitate to ask for their help.
Because the woman who has lost almost everything cannot be left alone.
The risk that she will declare war on her opponent is too great. She will not rest until she has her revenge.
‘Who has done this?’ the inspector says, his voice betraying a higher level of frustration than he would wish. ‘Who was it?’
‘Me,’ she says, beginning to weep. ‘I did this.’
EARLIER
So many loose ends, so many roads that led nowhere. Alex Recht couldn’t settle. Not at night, not during the day.
‘Are you going in to work?’ Diana had said when he slipped out of bed and started to get dressed.
Alex had always worn pyjamas during his marriage to Lena; with Diana he slept naked, except when the grandchildren stayed over. Then he dug out an old pair of ugly PJs, as his son put it.
‘I’ve got a few things to sort out,’ Alex had replied.
Diana had looked disappointed. She had thought they could take their cross-country skis and drive up to Nacka, which wasn’t a bad idea. The weather had once again changed from foul to fantastic; the sun was shining with every scrap of its winter strength, and the snow looked like stiffly whipped meringue.
But Alex couldn’t bring himself to take the day off and go skiing, because in that same stiffly whipped meringue they had found two murdered children just days earlier. So work had to come first, particularly as Fredrika Bergman was flying out to Israel the very next day. Alex had to get in touch with his Israeli colleagues and set up a collaborative process that Fredrika could tap into.
He had spoken to the National Crime Unit the previous evening; they already had a network of contacts with Israel, and had set the ball rolling. The prosecutor liked the direction the investigation was taking. He had great confidence in what he referred to as ‘the Israeli lead’, and thought Fredrika would solve the whole thing in just a couple of days. Alex was rather more doubtful. The case had started to look like a jigsaw, with far too many of those involved claiming too great a share of the pieces available.
For example, Abraham and Simon’s parents were withholding information that Alex needed, which was why Fredrika was going all the way to Israel. But Alex had no intention of giving in so easily. He called Gideon and Carmen Eisenberg and asked them to stay at home for the next few hours.
‘I’m coming over; I need answers to one or two additional questions.’
‘Have you made a breakthrough in the case?’ Gideon wanted to know.
His voice was strained and weary; it belonged to a man going through hell, and Alex’s call had clearly ignited a spark of hope.
‘We’ll talk about that when I see you,’ Alex said.
He wasn’t prepared to have that kind of conversation over the phone. When he had finished speaking to Gideon Eisenberg, he called Fredrika.
‘I’m going to show the parents the pictures of the boys when we found them,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘We have to find out the significance of those paper bags over their heads.’
‘Are you going to tell them about the bag that was sent to the school as well?’
‘No. They might hear about it anyway, through the Solomon Community, but as far as I’m concerned the most important thing is to see if those damned bags mean something to the parents.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Fredrika asked.