Peder read through the list again. He didn’t know the children, had no idea who they were. However, none of them was over four years old. The boys who had been shot out on Lovön were ten.
There was one more thing he wanted to follow up. No doubt the police had already done the same thing, but that didn’t matter, because Peder didn’t have access to their material. When reading through the witness statements, he had noticed something which one of the parents who witnessed the shooting had said:
Josephine turned around to call to the child who was still inside. At the same time, one of the other children came up to her to ask for help with a shoelace that had come undone. As she crouched down, the shot was fired.
Peder thought the phrase ‘the child who was still inside’ was odd. Surely there must have been several children inside, so why would Josephine call one particular child? It didn’t look as if any of the witnesses had said that the child was theirs. Peder pictured the scene: it was after three o’clock, and parents had started arriving to pick up their children from day care and pre-school. Josephine hadn’t been wearing a coat when she died; had she just popped out to speak to a parent?
She was due to finish work at five that afternoon. She was shot just after three, when she happened to step outside.
But how could the killer have known that he would get the chance to shoot her two hours before she was due to go home?
The answer was simple. He couldn’t.
Peder slammed his hand down on the desk. He had known it all along: the killer on the roof hadn’t been aiming at the schoolteacher. He had been aiming at the children. Or possibly at one of the parents, but he thought that was less likely.
The children were the common denominator in both crimes, apart from the fact that they had been shot with the same gun. And now Peder wanted to know whether the killer had been after one specific child, or whether any child would have done.
‘I’ve got a terrible sore throat.’
Spencer was standing behind her in the hallway as she put on her boots.
‘I’ll be back in less than two hours.’
She pulled up one zip, then the other. Scarf, gloves. Woolly hat. It was so bloody cold. The fact that the sun was shining didn’t help at all when you lived in one of the most northerly countries in the world.
‘The thing is,’ Spencer said, ‘I’m worried about the trip to Israel.’
His shoulders were slumped, his posture poor. His eyes were dull and exhausted. For a moment Fredrika was afraid, as she always was when he felt ill or showed signs of tiredness. She stood up and placed a hand on his forehead. He pressed against it, wanting to get close to her.
‘You’ve got a temperature.’
Damn. All at once leaving him at home with the girls didn’t seem like such a good idea.
And what about the trip to Israel? Would she still go if she had to travel alone?
‘Go and lie down,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay at home.’
‘Nonsense, I can manage two hours. Go on – Alex is waiting.’
Fredrika could hear the sound of shrieking from her daughter’s room; it sounded as if Saga and Isak were about to start demolishing the apartment.
‘I won’t be long,’ she said, slipping out through the front door. She ran down the stairs; she didn’t even have time to say hello to a neighbour in passing.
Quick, quick.
She would have loved to go back to Israel with Spencer. If she had to go alone, the adventure was much less appealing. But she would still go.
Her mobile beeped; it was a text from the orchestra. Would she be coming to their rehearsal tomorrow evening?
In just a couple of days, the violin had disappeared from her universe. She was going to Israel; there was no chance that she would be able to make the rehearsal.
‘No time, will be there later in the week’ she replied.
She dashed through Tegnérlunden and over Barnhus Bridge. Crossed Fleminggatan and turned into Scheelegatan, heading for Police HQ.
Her mobile rang; it was Alex, wondering where she was. He was already in the car. He sounded tense; Fredrika sensed bad news.
‘Pick me up outside Spisa hos Helena,’ she said, stopping in front of the restaurant. Three minutes later she was sitting in the car.
‘The National Crime Unit called,’ he said. ‘They think the person who was lying on the roof could be a woman. The footprints indicate smallish feet, and the indentation left by the body in the snow shows that the person in question was no taller than one metre seventy.’
Fredrika was totally bewildered.
‘A woman? But whoever hunted down the boys on Lovön was wearing size 43 shoes.’
‘It could still be a woman,’ Alex said. ‘A smartarse who knows how to confuse the police.’
Fredrika’s mind was whirling.
It was possible that someone with small feet could have put on shoes that were too big…
However, it was less likely that someone with big feet could have put on shoes that were too small.
‘What do we do now?’ she said.
‘We carry on as before.’
‘With NCU investigating the murder of the teacher, while we concentrate on the boys?’
‘Yes.’
‘What if there’s more than one killer, Alex? Working as a team?’
‘In that case we’ve got twice the chance of catching them, if we carry on as we started.’
Fredrika tried to bring together the evidence to form a coherent picture. It was impossible. Different killers, same gun. Different kinds of victim, different crime scenes. Same community, same ethnicity.
One of her earliest thoughts came back to her.
‘I’m still not sure that the bullet that killed Josephine was meant for her rather than one of the children.’
‘To be honest, we can’t be sure of anything right now,’ Alex said.
‘In that case let me raise the stakes and say that this is something we are particularly unsure about.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘What’s that got to do with anything? Don’t you think it’s important to find out whether that lunatic actually meant to shoot a child?’
‘Because?’
Because in that case we could be dealing with the one thing we don’t want to say out loud.
A serial killer.
‘Because then we’d have three children who belong to the same school and the same community, who have been attacked with the same gun, and a killer who has marked each death with a paper bag with a face drawn on it,’ Fredrika said.
‘Would the killer have sent the bag to the school if the wrong victim had died?’
‘Maybe. If he or she wanted us to believe that the teacher really was meant to die. To stop us looking for other possible victims.’
Another thought occurred to her.
‘What if the chrysanthemum was sent before the murder took place?’
Her voice was quiet, her tone almost submissive.
‘But we know that wasn’t the case,’ Alex said. ‘It was delivered the following morning. The boys were missing but their bodies hadn’t been discovered, and Josephine was dead.’
Fredrika felt an all too familiar surge of obstinacy. The same obstinacy that had once driven Alex crazy, and alienated her from the rest of the team.
‘That’s got nothing to do with when it was ordered, or when the delivery was arranged.’
Alex sighed.
‘Well no, but…’
Fredrika interrupted him.
‘Do we know anything about those details? Have we been in touch with the firm responsible for the delivery?’
‘No, we haven’t, because as you might recall, this is not our investigation.’
‘In that case I’ll call NCU and check.’
Fredrika got out her mobile. ‘Who’s your contact?’