‘The pathologist is hoping to get back to us with further information tomorrow,’ he said, ‘but we shouldn’t get our hopes up. The second body has been in the ground for a long time, and key evidence is no longer available.’
He got up and began to write on the whiteboard at one end of the room.
‘As far as Rebecca Trolle is concerned, this is what we know. She went missing on her way to a party. She was seen on a bus heading in the opposite direction from the party; we don’t know why she was on the bus. She was expecting a child she didn’t want, and might well have been afraid that the child’s father would want to keep it. At the time of her disappearance she wasn’t in a steady relationship, as far as we are aware, but we do know that she had had sexual intercourse with a friend, Håkan Nilsson, whom she has referred to as a nuisance when speaking to other friends. And Håkan would have loved to be a father.’
Alex fell silent.
‘We also know that after her disappearance there were rumours that she had been selling sex on the Internet, but we seem to have hit a brick wall there,’ Peder said. ‘No one can give us the name of the website where she was allegedly active, and no one can tell us exactly how long she was supposed to have been doing this. Nor can anyone remember when the rumour started, or where it came from.’
‘What happened with Diana Trolle’s friend?’ Alex asked. ‘Did you speak to her and her daughter?’
‘I’m seeing them in an hour.’
‘This sounds like nonsense to me,’ Fredrika said. ‘We have nothing that would explain why Rebecca would do such a thing. Selling your body isn’t exactly something you do because it’s fun – you do it because you have to, or because you’re sick and you don’t know any better.’
‘I agree,’ Alex said. ‘Let’s see where we are after Peder has spoken to Diana’s friend and her daughter.’
He stepped back and looked at his notes.
‘Håkan Nilsson is still the most interesting character. Unless the DNA test shows that someone else was the child’s father; if that’s the case, we need to prioritise the search for the secret boyfriend.’
‘Håkan could still be of interest, even if he isn’t the father,’ Fredrika said. ‘That might even make him more interesting. He was obviously keener on Rebecca than she was on him. He might have found out she was pregnant and confronted her, gone crazy with jealousy.’
‘And killed her,’ Peder chipped in.
Alex looked at him.
‘Not just killed her,’ he said. ‘Dismembered her body as well.’
He left his words hanging in the air.
‘It could have happened,’ Peder said. ‘He’s an odd bugger. Unpleasant.’
‘I’m not saying you’re wrong,’ Alex said. ‘What I’m saying is the fact that her body was desecrated in that way tells us something important about the murderer. He must have had the time and the opportunity to dismember the body, then to transport the sacks to the place where she was buried.’
‘Can we tell whether he knew what he was doing when he cut up the body?’ Fredrika asked.
Alex paused for a moment before replying.
‘I received some information on that point just before the meeting. According to the pathologist, the body was dismembered using a chainsaw, which definitely does not indicate that the murderer knew what he was doing.’
No one said a word. Alex allowed them time to digest what they had just heard.
‘The use of a chainsaw proves that the murderer must have had access to a remote and probably isolated venue which belonged to him. You can’t go into a friend’s garage and start chopping up a body with a chainsaw; it would be too messy and too difficult to clean up.’
‘What does this mean in terms of the killer’s profile?’ Fredrika asked. ‘Using such extreme violence… it’s sick. This has to be personal. The murderer seems to have wanted to debase Rebecca, even after her death.’
Alex nodded.
‘Which is why we have to be careful. Under no circumstances must this information be leaked to the media. For one thing, the attention would create problems for us, and for another it would be difficult to question suspects. No one would dare to speak to us.’
He looked worried; he turned to Fredrika.
‘What about Daniella, the ex-girlfriend; can we eliminate her from our inquiries?’
Fredrika considered her response.
‘Not entirely. She reacted oddly when we mentioned the rumours about Rebecca selling sex on the internet. I got the feeling that she was lying, or keeping something from us.’
‘OK, we’ll keep her on the books for now. Do you think she could have been the source of the rumour?’
‘I don’t know. It did cross my mind.’
Fredrika decided to carry on talking while she had the opportunity.
‘That party Rebecca didn’t turn up at, the mentors’ party – what’s that all about?’
‘Rebecca was part of a so-called mentoring programme,’ Alex explained. ‘To put it briefly, the students who were selected for the programme were given a personal mentor, who would provide advice and regular contact. The mentors were a wide range of different people: high flyers in industry, priests, authors, a couple of politicians.’
‘Who was Rebecca’s mentor?’
‘Let me think… Valter Lund.’
Fredrika was surprised.
‘Valter Lund? The boss of Axbergers?’
‘Exactly.’
‘But why was he her mentor if she was studying the history of literature? Did they just allocate these mentors in a completely random way?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Alex said. ‘I remember we spoke to him, but we were able to eliminate him more or less straight away.’
Peder spoke up.
‘I went through Rebecca’s diary this morning. It was bloody hard to make out.’
Alex nodded, looking less than happy.
‘Thanks for the reminder, Peder.’
‘What do you mean, hard to make out?’ Fredrika asked.
‘She had her own system for noting things down,’ Alex said. ‘For example, she never wrote the name of the person she’d arranged to see, just the initials. We managed to identify most of them, but we had to give up on some. We made a list of everyone who appeared in her diary in the months leading up to her disappearance.’
‘Two weeks before she went missing she met a “TA”,’ Peder said. ‘Who was that?’
Alex frowned, trying to remember.
‘I think it was something to do with her dissertation. Completely irrelevant.’
‘And who was she seeing on the day she disappeared?’ Fredrika asked.
‘Nobody at all. We mapped out her final days as best we could with the help of the diary, but we didn’t find anything earth-shattering.’
‘Could I have a copy?’
‘You can have mine,’ Peder offered. ‘I don’t need it at the moment.’
Fredrika looked pleased, and started gathering her things together.
Alex felt a sudden pang in his chest. Of course she was going home; she had a family to think of. He thought back to dinner with his daughter the previous evening. He was a grandfather now; earlier than he had expected, perhaps, but it felt good.
But Lena never knew what it was like to be a grandmother.
‘See you tomorrow,’ he said to Fredrika.
The rest of them stayed on for a while, talking over a number of points. The officers who had been brought in to supplement the team had remained silent during the early part of the meeting, but now felt able to air their views and ideas. Alex caught himself not listening. Instead, he was thinking of Diana Trolle, whose daughter’s body had been dismembered using a chainsaw. He would solve this case if it was the last thing he did.
10
The meeting took place in Erland Malm’s office, the room Spencer Lagergren had visited just a few days earlier. Apart from Spencer and Erland, there was a representative from the student body and a member of the university board. Spencer had naively assumed that the meeting would put a stop to his miserable plight, and was looking forward to informing his employer that he had no intention of returning to work at present, but wished to remain on paternity leave. Fredrika had been unable to come home and look after Saga this afternoon as she had promised, so Spencer had brought the child with him to the meeting.