He knew that he still didn’t have it.
And that terrified him.
Because now he understood why Eden had refused to go to the hospital with her daughter.
‘Eden knows who did this,’ he said. ‘She’s going to take this city apart if we don’t stop her.’
‘According to the neighbour, it was a woman who shot Eden’s husband,’ Fredrika said.
They looked at one another, both well aware of who that woman must be.
‘Mona Samson,’ Alex said.
He immediately sent a patrol to the office on Torsgatan and her apartment on Hantverkargatan.
‘She won’t be there,’ Fredrika said.
‘I don’t think so either,’ Alex said gloomily; he still didn’t understand what had happened. If Gideon was the killer who had taken the boys, did that mean Mona Samson was his partner? The person who had lain on the roof and tried to shoot Polly Eisenberg? Who was still missing…
Alex pressed both hands to his head.
‘I’m going mad,’ he said. ‘What the hell is all this about?’
Fredrika looked at the blood on the sheets.
‘It’s as if this doesn’t concern us at all,’ she said. ‘As if the players in this game are following their own rules, with their own referee and linesmen.’
‘I can’t accept that. I want to know what happened.’
‘So do I, but who’s going to tell us?’
‘Eden,’ Alex said.
‘Do you really think she knows? If she does, then surely she would have been able to prevent this.’
Alex spread his hands in a gesture of resignation.
He felt like crying, but managed to hold it together.
‘Where do we think Mona Samson might be? She can’t have got very far,’ Fredrika said.
Alex forced himself to think.
Where would someone like Mona Samson go?
‘She’s on her way out of the country,’ he said, unexpectedly sure of himself.
‘By plane?’
‘Yes.’
He ran out of the apartment, sent a patrol car straight to the airport. Fredrika followed him.
‘Alex, we have to be prepared for the possibility that we might not find her. We know her name isn’t Mona Samson, for a start.’
‘We’ve got a sketch. We’ll put that out.’
Fredrika had seen the sketch, and knew it was worthless. So did Alex.
‘We have to find her,’ he said. ‘We have to.’
They looked at one another, both at a loss. They reached a silent mutual agreement: they didn’t want to wait in Eden’s apartment.
To the relief of the CSIs, they left the building and went and sat in one of the patrol cars which was parked up with its engine idling.
Alex thought about what Peder Rydh had said: that they were looking for two perpetrators who couldn’t agree; who had fallen out.
He told Fredrika as she leaned back against the headrest, utterly exhausted.
‘So what we saw here tonight is the result of two killers who couldn’t agree?’
She sounded dubious.
‘I don’t know what we saw here tonight,’ Alex said. ‘How does Eden fit into all this? Why did her daughters have to die?’
‘Because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time? This is such a mess; I can’t see a single clear thread that runs through the whole case.’
‘You think it’s a coincidence?’ Alex said, gazing out of the window. ‘That there was no logical reason for the murderer to come to Eden’s apartment? There just happened to be some kind of confrontation?’
It was his turn to sound hesitant now.
Fredrika pulled off her hat, dotted with snow crystals.
‘I think we missed Efraim Kiel’s part in all this,’ she said. ‘Given what I learned on my visit to Israel, I’m wondering if the Israelis know more than they’re letting on, and if Efraim Kiel was on some kind of mission over here.’
‘You mean the Israeli police might have asked him to look into the murders, as he was here anyway?’
She nodded.
‘Something along those lines. That would explain why he was so interested and why he asked so many questions. And why he’s been avoiding the Swedish police; since all those involved have an intelligence-related background, he wanted to run his own race.’
She threw down her hat.
‘I’m not saying that’s definitely the case,’ she went on. ‘It’s just an idea, and it could explain things.’
Alex shifted in his seat, feeling a fresh surge of energy.
‘I think it’s a bloody good idea,’ he said.
For the first time a coherent picture was slowly beginning to emerge. Eden had said that Säpo had its own reasons for keeping Efraim under surveillance. Could that have led him to Eden’s apartment? Had Mona Samson followed him there?
That must be what happened.
He was just about to share his thoughts with Fredrika when a colleague yanked the car door open and shouted:
‘A woman’s just been killed on Odenplan. She stepped out in front of a car – there was nothing the driver could do. We think it’s Mona Samson. In fact we know it is; she had a gun fitted with a silencer in her pocket, and several Samson Security AB business cards. Plus her appearance matches the sketch.’
Alex didn’t know what to feel; every emotion drained away, leaving him empty.
‘So she’s gone,’ Fredrika said.
‘Yes,’ their colleague replied.
‘Good.’
There was nothing more to say.
Fredrika and Alex simply sat there in the car, waiting for life to begin again.
During the first week in February, a little girl came wandering into the Swedish embassy in Helsinki. She was crying so hard that at first it was difficult to work out what she was saying, but eventually they managed to get her name.
Polly Eisenberg.
She had been driven to a street nearby and told which way to go.
Nobody knew who had dropped her off, including the child.
Nor did she know where she had been.
Carmen Eisenberg had been sitting in her apartment overwhelmed by apathy, having lost both her husband and children within a week; Polly’s return brought her back to life.
Gideon’s parents came to Stockholm to collect their son’s body. He was laid to rest in the country he had left ten years earlier. Carmen and Polly were there too; Polly wore a pretty dress and played with her doll. Her mother sat beside her, pale and silent. She didn’t move a muscle throughout the entire ceremony.
Slowly the truth emerged, until eventually the only thing missing was the murder weapon.
Through Gideon Eisenberg’s employer, they learned that he had had two meetings with the woman known as Mona Samson. The meetings had taken place a few months earlier, and as far as the employer knew, had not led to any definite collaboration.
At least not on a professional basis.
When the police went through Gideon’s computer and personal diary, it turned out that he had met Mona on numerous occasions afterwards. In bars and restaurants. Outside working hours.
‘Gideon had a lot to apologise to his wife for when he died,’ Fredrika Bergman said acidly. ‘He was cheating on her.’
‘So Mona was having relationships with both Saul and Gideon,’ Alex said. ‘Can we draw that conclusion?’
Fredrika thought so. ‘Perhaps she and Gideon wanted us to think that Saul was the perpetrator. And we almost fell for it; if we hadn’t managed to discredit Gideon’s alibi, we would never have believed Saul’s story.’
Two Israeli passports were found on Mona Samson, one in the name of Mona Samson, the other Nadia Tahir. They didn’t know why she had two passports, and the Israelis couldn’t – or wouldn’t – explain it. Around her neck she wore a pendant with the inscription ‘Benjamin’s mum’. They had no idea what that meant either.
They also found out that Gideon had been on a business trip to Israel during the week when Abraham and Simon were exchanging emails with the Lion.
‘He was responsible for the email correspondence,’ Fredrika said. ‘He came up with the Lion, probably to distract attention from himself in a subsequent police investigation. I don’t suppose we’ll ever find out who picked up the boys on their way to their tennis coaching session; it could have been Gideon, or it could have been Mona Samson.’