How hard could it be?
You just had to live.
He emerged via the old building leading onto Scheelegatan. The air was raw and damp. The sun that had shone so brightly the day before was gone. On days like this it was hard to imagine that it would be back later in the year. Stockholm’s weather was hard on those who were tough, and even harder on those who were already weak.
Hantverkargatan was a long street running all the way from Sankt Eriksgatan down to the City Hall. Diana had been to dinner there once, and she still talked about it. Candelabras and linen napkins, an orchestra playing, male guests who danced like gods. Listening to her made Alex break out in a sweat. If she wanted candelabras and linen napkins, she could find another man. Although he could dance. Very well, in fact.
‘That’ll do,’ she had said when he mentioned it.
Samson Security AB lay only three blocks from Police HQ, in a very attractive building on the left hand side. Alex stopped outside the main door.
He felt at something of a loss.
What had he actually thought was going to happen here?
He tried the door. Locked, of course. But there was an intercom with a list of names. He glanced through them: several private individuals, a small number of businesses. Samson Security AB was not one of them.
There was, however, a Mona Samson. Strange – why wasn’t the name of the company listed? Did no one ever come here on business?
But Saul Goldmann had been here.
Alex rang the bell. No response. He tried again. Not a sound from Mona Samson.
So he tried someone else, with more success. A deep male voice answered. When Alex explained who he was and asked if he could come in, the door buzzed and he was soon standing in the foyer. People with nothing to hide rarely refused to co-operate when the police asked for help.
Mona Samson lived on the third floor. The lift was broken, so Alex had to walk. That didn’t bother him; it enabled him to get a better idea of the property.
There were four doors on the level where Mona Samson lived. Alex tried her doorbell, heard the sound reverberating through the apartment. As he had expected, no one came.
With a certain amount of hesitation he rang her neighbour’s bell. The man who answered the door was wearing shorts, in spite of the cold. Alex recognised his voice; it was the man who had let him in off the street.
Alex introduced himself again and showed his police ID.
‘I’m looking for Mona Samson. I don’t suppose you know where I can get hold of her?’
‘Has something happened?’
A legitimate question when the police turned up on a Sunday afternoon.
‘No, nothing serious, but I do need to speak to her.’
The man thought for a moment.
‘Hang on, I’ll ask my partner. He has a better idea than I do of what the neighbours get up to.’
He turned away and called out:
‘Andreas, do you know where Mona is? The police are looking for her.’
Excellent, now the entire building knew what was going on.
A red-haired man ambled into the hallway. He nodded to Alex, and like his partner, asked whether something had happened. Alex repeated his answer.
‘I’ve no idea where she is,’ Andreas said. ‘I bumped into her in the laundry room on Tuesday, but I haven’t seen her since.’
Alex couldn’t help feeling disappointed. His resigned expression made Andreas keep talking. ‘She might have gone home,’ he said. ‘She does that sometimes.’
‘Home?’
‘To Israel. That’s where she’s from.’
ISRAEL
The American Colony Hoteclass="underline" an oasis consisting of beautiful stone buildings and a lush, green garden, situated only ten minutes’ walk from the so-called Damascus Gate in the wall around the Old City. Originally built by a group of Americans and Swedes, the same Swedes that Selma Lagerlöf later wrote about in her book Jerusalem.
Fredrika Bergman was given a room in the building known as the East House. It was a small, minimalist but charming room, with a high ceiling. Lovely double aspect windows. A bathroom so stunning that Spencer would have insisted they sleep in the shower.
Darling, you should be here with me.
Isak Ben-Zwi had dropped her off about an hour ago. She had stayed in the hotel, had lunch in the magnificent restaurant. If the background to her trip hadn’t been so horrific, she would have felt privileged; as it was, she just felt burdened.
She sat in the restaurant for a while and worked. To Spencer’s surprise and delight, she had taken her violin with her.
‘I thought you were going there to work,’ he had said.
‘I am, but there’s always time for meditation.’
Meditation. That was how she referred to the time she spent playing the violin, so that people would understand what it meant to her. An essential breathing space.
But now she was actually here, that was the last thing on her mind. She was sitting with her back to the wall, eyes fixed on her laptop. She liked to have people around her, the noise and bustle reminding her that the reality with which she was confronted in her work was not her own life. She was not the one who had lost her children. It was someone else.
And for that she was deeply grateful.
Daphne and Saul Goldmann.
Carmen and Gideon Eisenberg.
Alex wanted her to find out more about their past, try to understand why they had left Israel and moved to Sweden, because neither he nor Fredrika believed that the move had been motivated only by the feeble reasons the families themselves had put forward – although Fredrika did sympathise when it came to the issue of security. It was doomed to be a fragile commodity in Israel; conflict followed conflict, and the people never had any peace. Perhaps eventually some had had enough, and simply upped sticks and left. Particularly if they had children.
In the car on the way from the airport, Isak had said that security had improved. The first years after the outbreak of the second Intifada had been extremely difficult. Fredrika realised that he was speaking from an Israeli perspective. The calm surrounding her in Jerusalem seemed deceptive, like a bubble that could burst at any moment, because presumably the Palestinians didn’t share the Israeli view that things had got better.
She was ashamed as she shook off thoughts of the Israeli-Palestine conflict as if it were an unwelcome insect, but she just didn’t have room for that kind of thing alongside the immediate crisis she was here to try and solve. A crisis involving two murdered children.
The same questions that had haunted her over the past few days were still going round and round in her head. She wrote them down. Read through them. Again. There was nothing new to add. She must have patience, wait for the results of the Israeli efforts to identify the Lion, so that they could either eliminate him or establish what role he had played.
And then there were the kibbutzim, where she hoped to find out more about the Paper Boy, and about the past history of the Eisenberg and Goldmann families.
Her phone rang, making her jump.
‘We need to take a closer look at Saul Goldmann,’ Alex said.
Fredrika listened attentively as he went through what he had found out.
Another trail leading to Israel. Another Israeli citizen.
‘Why would Saul Goldmann kill his own son?’ she said. ‘Or be involved in his murder?’
‘That’s what we need to find out,’ Alex said.
‘Do you think the Goldmann lead is more promising than Efraim Kiel and the Lion?’
‘As I always say, I don’t think anything at this stage. Anyway, how do you know we’re looking at two different leads? We know next to nothing, Fredrika. We think we’re looking for two perpetrators, but it could just as easily be three. Or four. Or just one. We think one of them might be a woman, but we don’t know that either.’
‘If you give me Mona Samson’s details I can find out if she’s entered Israel over the past few days.’