‘Yes.’
Alex looked wary, as if he wasn’t sure how much he was prepared to tell her.
‘May I ask which of them it was, and why?’
Alex glanced at his watch, then folded his arms.
‘We’ve just taken a break in the interview. I need to be back in ten minutes. Would you mind telling me why this is important to you?’
What could she say to that?
‘As I told you, Säpo has a certain amount of interest in Efraim Kiel,’ she said, choosing her words with care. ‘I just want to rule out any additional links to our operations in your investigation.’
It was a weak answer. Why would she have come hurtling over here to find that out?
But Alex didn’t seem to have time to ponder such an anomaly.
‘Do you remember my asking you about the Paper Boy?’ he said.
Eden nodded.
‘We now know who he is,’ Alex said proudly.
Eden couldn’t believe her ears. How was that possible? Surely the Israelis wouldn’t have shared such sensitive information with Fredrika Bergman?
‘A deranged child killer,’ Alex said.
She waited for him to tell her the rest: that the Paper Boy had been a secret source working for the Israelis, but instead he told her a completely different story.
Fifteen minutes later Eden Lundell was standing on Polhemsgatan, smoking a cigarette.
Two Paper Boys.
Two stories.
Alex’s theory was more convincing than hers. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better. Kudos to Fredrika for her efforts in Israel. She had found out an astonishing amount in a very short time, information they would never have got from anyone else.
She felt the weight of her mobile in her pocket and thought about calling Mikael again, telling him they could stay at home.
But that would annoy him even more. Mikael wasn’t the kind of person who could deal with mixed messages. Better to let them go to the apartment in Södermalm.
Eden stubbed out her cigarette and went inside. It wasn’t until she was in the lift on the way back to her office that she realised what she had done. That cigarette was the first one she had smoked since she arrived back in Sweden. She hadn’t missed them for several hours.
The decision was made before the lift doors opened.
She yanked the packet of cigarettes out of her pocket, dropped them in the waste bin along with her lighter.
Eden Lundell had smoked her last cigarette.
Interview rooms were always too small. The air was always too stale, the light always a little too bright. They had started the second session, and Alex Recht didn’t care if he had to stay there all night. Saul Goldmann was going to start talking, and soon.
‘You can carry on telling me you left your phone in your apartment. You can carry on telling me that you can’t be responsible for the location of Mona Samson’s phone when you called her. But let me make one thing clear: Mona Samson has retracted her previous statement. She says you left her apartment at two o’clock. And guess what? We believe her.’
Alex left the words hanging in the air, waiting for Saul Goldmann’s counter-move.
He had changed during the short break. He was a broken man.
‘Is she here?’ he said. ‘Mona – is she here too?’
‘No. But you are.’
Mona Samson’s whereabouts were still unclear. She had told the police she was on a business trip to Norway; she had called from a different mobile on a withheld number, said if they wanted to get hold of her they could use the number they already had. It would take time to find out the new number and track the location of the phone. After speaking to her they had tried the old number, but the phone was switched off. They had asked her to come to Police HQ at her earliest convenience, but Alex suspected that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.
Saul Goldmann held up his hands in a defensive gesture.
‘Okay. I lied. I admit it, I lied. But I had nothing to do with Abraham’s murder. Nothing at all.’
He swallowed hard, clasped his hands on the table. Looked down and paused for a moment before continuing.
‘It’s true, Abraham wasn’t my biological son. And it’s true that my father was the so-called Paper Boy. It was because of him that I had a vasectomy when I was only twenty; I was obsessed with the idea that I might be like him, that I would never be a good parent. It took time to get over what had happened, but my mother made sure I got help. Professional help. When Daphne and I moved in together I tried to have the vasectomy reversed, because I’d heard that was possible. But not in my case.’
He looked very sad.
‘They said complications must have arisen, and there was nothing they could do. So we went down the IVF route with donated sperm. It was a mutual decision. We both longed for children, and Abraham was very much a wanted baby when he was born.’
The words simply flowed; no prompting was necessary. Alex listened in silence.
‘Daphne and I have been together for over twenty years. There is no woman in the world that I love more, but you know how it is; things get a little… dull. That’s what happened to us, and then Mona turned up. Very attractive, expressive, vibrant. She worked for an Israeli company in the process of setting up branches in Sweden. Mona is half-Israeli, half-Palestinian. I can’t explain why, but I fell for her. Slept with her the first time we met, then carried on in Stockholm.’
He shrugged, looking slightly puzzled, as if he couldn’t quite understand why he was telling the police about his private life.
‘We met at her apartment last Wednesday. Had some sushi, went to bed. I left at two, but I was so tired I went home and had a sleep. She has that effect on men. You give her what she wants, and you can hardly remember a thing afterwards. When I got home I realised I’d left my iPad in her apartment. That was why I called her, to find out when I could pick it up. Abraham would wonder where it was, and I didn’t want to end up in a situation where I had to start coming up with a whole load of explanations. But she was difficult to get hold of, and when I did speak to her she said she was tied up with meetings, and wouldn’t be available for the next few days. She sent me the iPad by courier later that evening. Not exactly discreet.’
He changed position on the uncomfortable chair, seeking the right words for what he wanted to say next.
‘Although of course nobody reacted to the business with the iPad, because by then we realised that something had happened to Abraham. Daphne went over to the Solomon Community, and Gideon and I began searching for the boys. We started near the tennis centre, then moved further and further away. The police wanted to speak to us, of course, so we had to interrupt the search for a while. And I was in a complete panic.’
Another defensive gesture, and this time he glanced at his lawyer.
‘I didn’t want to tell anyone why I’d been at home having an afternoon nap when Abraham went missing. I’d told Daphne and my work colleagues that I had a meeting, so I stuck to that and asked Mona to say the same if you contacted her. She was reluctant at first, but I persuaded her that it was the best thing to do. For the sake of the investigation. If you had to waste time following up a lot of unnecessary minor leads, you would lose the rhythm, and might not find the boys.’
Saul’s shoulders slumped.
‘But that’s what happened anyway,’ he said.
And that was the end of his account.
Alex remained silent, taking in what he had heard. He felt completely at a loss; he didn’t know what to think.
The story worked. Saul Goldmann still lacked a confirmed alibi for the time when the boys disappeared, but Alex knew he was telling the truth. Saul had shown different aspects of his character; the lack of that information had led Alex to judge his reaction to his son’s death as abnormal.
But he still had questions.
‘Mona Samson – do you have a picture of her?’