‘When you called Mona Samson’s mobile, it was near the bridge – Djurgårdsbron. Had she also left her phone somewhere?’
The lawyer decided to speak up.
‘It’s hardly up to my client to explain where Mona Samson’s mobile phone was that afternoon.’
Alex backed off.
‘Where is Mona Samson at the moment?’
‘I haven’t a clue.’
‘Are you in a relationship with her?’
Saul burst out laughing.
‘I’m sorry, are you serious?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, no. No, no, no – I am not in a relationship with Mona.’
The lawyer cleared his throat and looked demonstratively at his watch.
‘If this is all you’ve got, I think we’re just about done here,’ he said.
Pure rage surged through Alex’s body, putting all his senses on full alert. No fucking way was Saul Goldmann getting off so easily.
At that point the interview was interrupted as a colleague knocked on the door and came in.
‘Can I speak to you for a moment?’ he said to Alex.
Alex got up and left the room.
‘This had better be good news,’ he said.
‘It is. Mona Samson has been in touch. She’s retracted her previous statement. Saul Goldmann left her apartment at two o’clock.’
The plane was cruising at thirty thousand feet. Fredrika Bergman was in a window seat, feeling stressed because she wasn’t on the spot in Stockholm, where everything was happening, but calmed by the fact that as long as she was in the air, she was isolated from the rest of the world.
With the help of what she had been told by David and Gali Eisenberg, they now had a viable theory.
Saul Goldmann had become the Paper Boy.
He had murdered Abraham, who was not his biological son.
He had also, after waiting for many years, taken his revenge for the loss of his own father when he was a child. That was why he had targeted Simon and Polly Eisenberg, the children of the man responsible for sending Saul’s father to prison.
But something was bothering Fredrika; she wasn’t completely satisfied with their conclusions. There were still several unexplained loose ends.
Mona Samson, for example. Was she the person on the roof who had shot Josephine? And was it to conceal her involvement that she was hiding behind this peculiar security company that seemed to be little more than a facade?
And then there was the Lion. Who might be Saul Goldmann. Or Efraim Kiel. But if Saul was the Lion, then Fredrika didn’t understand why he had chosen to make contact with the boys via email. The Lion was definitely linked to the murders in some way; if she hadn’t been convinced before, there was no doubt left in her mind when she found out about the name he had given in one of the internet cafés. Therefore, the exchange of emails must have served a purpose – but what was it, if not to enable him to approach the boys without arousing their suspicion?
Fredrika usually slept whenever she flew, but this time her body rebelled, refused to give in to tiredness.
Because she knew something was wrong.
They had stumbled on something when they started asking the Israeli police questions, and Fredrika couldn’t work out what it was. The only thing she knew for sure was they had come too close to information that the state of Israel wished to protect.
There was nothing strange about that; such information exists in every country with self-respect. This time, however, it had jeopardised an important police investigation through a refusal to co-operate. She recalled what Isak Ben-Zwi had said to her: that she wouldn’t learn about the Paper Boy on the kibbutz. That she was deluded if she thought she would find what she was looking for there.
He had sounded as if he knew who the Paper Boy was.
But he obviously didn’t, because otherwise he would have known that Avital Greenburg had once been called exactly that: the Paper Boy.
Could there be more than one Paper Boy?
Of course not. The whole thing must be a mixture of classified information and a misunderstanding.
Fredrika still couldn’t shake off the feeling of unease that was steadily growing stronger.
Evidence was being withheld, for valid or invalid reasons. And that was damaging the investigation, leading them to the wrong conclusions.
Gideon and Saul had lied about their professional background. They had also lied about their reasons for leaving Israel, either because they thought none of this was relevant in the hunt for whoever had murdered their sons, or because they had no choice, regardless of whether they believed that this tragedy was linked to their past.
The latter alternative worried Fredrika more than anything, because it could mean that the parents knew exactly why someone had chosen to murder their children in particular, and that they had decided to handle it themselves, without involving the police.
In which case the drama could well have a more apocalyptic resolution than any of them could imagine.
‘The apartment is on Mariatorget. I want you and the girls to go there right away. Pack a bag and get a cab. I’ll be there later this evening.’
Eden Lundell was talking as she walked from Säpo HQ to Alex Recht’s office in another building.
‘Eden, I’m just about to start cooking tea for the girls,’ her husband Mikael said wearily. ‘What are you talking about?’
Her heart skipped a beat. She didn’t have time to be gentle and diplomatic; she just wanted him to do as she said.
‘I can’t explain what’s happened, but we won’t be able to stay at home for the next few days. Please do as I say. Get a cab to Police HQ in Kungsholmen and pick up the key in reception, then go to the apartment and wait for me there.’
She would have spoken to Mikael earlier in the day, but hadn’t been able to get hold of him. That was fine; the girls were safer in some anonymous day care centre than in the apartment.
Thank God they weren’t at the Solomon school.
She heard the sound of clattering in the background, along with her daughters’ non-stop chatter.
Eden’s everyday life; all too often she was much too small a part of that existence.
‘I’ll call you when we’ve eaten,’ Mikael said.
Eden stopped dead.
‘Mikael, for fuck’s sake, this is important. Just do as I say. Get in a cab. You can order pizza when you arrive.’
She had raised her voice because of fear and frustration. It didn’t matter if there were only two people in the entire world who knew that Efraim Kiel was the father of her children; right now that was one person too many.
‘In that case you need to come home and explain why it’s so urgent,’ Mikael said. ‘Because I am not about to drop everything on some whim of yours.’
Eden could have wept. She hardly ever felt that way, and it frightened her.
‘Can’t you just do as I say? This is important. Really important.’
Her tone was calmer now, and she had lowered her voice to its normal pitch.
Mikael said something to one of the girls.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay. But tonight we need to have a proper discussion, because I can’t cope with this. You take off on some secret mission, then you call home and want us to turn our lives upside down. You just don’t do that. Not if you’re a family.’
She nodded eagerly, overwhelmed with relief. She didn’t care how angry he was as long as he got out of that apartment.
‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk when I get there. See you later.’
She slipped her mobile into her pocket and ran the rest of the way to Alex’s office, straight up two flights of stairs without waiting for the lift. She had called him a little while earlier, and he had said he would be there for fifteen minutes, but no longer.
He was alone at his desk when she walked in.
‘Bloody hell, did you run all the way?’
She sat down.
‘I read online that the police had arrested the father of one of the boys as a suspect for the murders. Is that true?’