Gustav Sjöö’s voice was an almost inaudible whisper: ‘Alive?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Had she been buried alive?’
The question made both Peder and Cecilia stiffen. Being buried alive was possibly the only thing worse than being dismembered and buried in bin bags.
‘No,’ said Cecilia. ‘She was dead when she was buried. Why do you ask?’
Sjöö shuffled, wrung his hands.
‘I probably just misunderstood what you said.’
Peder straightened the notepad in front of him.
‘You seem to have a tendency to misunderstand things, Gustav. For example, you misunderstood your girlfriend when you thought she wanted to have sex with you.’
Sjöö looked at Peder with distaste.
‘If that’s what you want to talk about, I’d like my solicitor present.’
Peder held up his hands.
‘Let’s go back to Rebecca. When did you last see her?’
Sjöö gawped at him.
‘Pardon me for pointing this out, but you’ve already asked that question. Two years ago, when she went missing.’
‘And now we’re asking it again.’
Sjöö rested his chin on one hand, his elbows on the table.
‘I can hardly remember. We had a supervision session a few days before she disappeared.’
‘How did it go?’
‘Fine, as far as I recall.’
‘No disagreements?’
‘Not that I can remember.’
Cecilia broke in.
‘Did you and Rebecca meet privately?’
‘Privately?’
‘Outside the university.’
Peder could see that Sjöö was genuinely bewildered.
‘No, never.’
‘Did you try it on with her?’
‘What the fuck are you…?’
‘Answer the question!’ Peder roared.
He was risking everything on the turn of one card as he slammed his fist down on the table. Sjöö was clearly shaken.
‘No, I did not.’
‘Other female students have claimed that they had problems with you.’
‘Thank you, I’m aware of that. I’m telling you what I’ve told all the other police officers: they’re lying.’
Of course they are, Peder thought grimly.
There were times when he hated his job, when he thought he’d like to do something else. Why the hell did they never get a bloody confession? Why did no one ever hold their hands up and say, ‘Yes, you’re right, I did it’? That would have made life easier. Too easy, perhaps.
‘Was Rebecca happy with your supervision?’ Peder asked.
Gustav Sjöö sighed.
‘No, I don’t think she was. I found it difficult to cope with the amount of energy she was prepared to put into her dissertation. She went back over it, reformulated the whole thrust of the piece, rewrote the questions. I thought it lacked gravitas.’
‘You thought the fact that she had energy meant her work lacked gravitas?’
‘No, of course not. But… The whole hypothesis was flawed; it was starting to resemble a police investigation. That was when I pointed out that she was actually studying literature, not criminology.’
‘What do you mean, it resembled a police investigation?’ Cecilia asked.
‘She was writing about Thea Aldrin, the children’s author who was sent to prison for the murder of her ex-husband, and who was also accused of having written violent pornography under a pseudonym. Rebecca became obsessed with Thea Aldrin, and started digging up all kinds of old stuff that had nothing whatsoever to do with the topic of her dissertation. In the end, she was convinced that Thea had neither murdered her ex, nor written the pornographic books.’
So, Rebecca had been a conscientious student. Peder found it difficult to believe that this could have provided a motive for murder.
‘How did she reach the conclusion that this Thea Aldrin was innocent?’ Cecilia asked.
‘Women’s intuition or something,’ Sjöö said. ‘She said all her sources were confidential, that she couldn’t reveal where the information came from. We had some lengthy discussions on that particular issue.’
Cecilia smiled.
‘Do you own a chainsaw?’
‘What? No. Yes.’
‘Yes or no?’
‘Yes, I do. There’s one at my summer cottage.’
‘Do you use it often?’
‘No, I can’t say I do.’
He paused.
‘Listen, you checked me out two years ago. I had an alibi for the evening in question. Can’t we just finish this off so I can go home?’
Peder slid a piece of paper from under his notepad: the timetable for the conference Sjöö had been attending in Västerås the evening Rebecca disappeared.
‘We’ve taken a closer look at your alibi, Gustav. And it’s far from watertight. See for yourself.’
He pushed the timetable across the table.
‘This shows that you were free from 16.00 until 19.00, when pre-dinner drinks were served before the meal at 20.00.’
Sjöö looked at him.
‘Yes?’
‘Nobody would have missed you if you’d nipped back to Stockholm, dealt with Rebecca, then turned up late for dinner. It’s just over a hundred kilometres from Västerås to Stockholm. If you put your foot down, it doesn’t take too long.’
‘From a purely hypothetical point of view, I agree with you. But you’re wrong. I didn’t leave Västerås.’
‘And how can we be sure of that?’
Gustav Sjöö leaned back wearily on his chair.
‘That’s your problem, not mine. I went to my room for a nap before dinner. During the pre-dinner drinks party I chatted to a colleague from Uppsala University who can confirm that I was there.’
‘What was the name of this colleague?’
Sjöö remained silent for a moment, then he said, ‘Professor Spencer Lagergren.’
20
They still hadn’t been able to dismiss the allegation that Rebecca had been selling sex over the internet. Peder had asked the technical team to look into the website where Håkan Nilsson claimed to have seen her; he had kept all the information, including the date when he had seen her and the alias she had been using.
A feeling of restlessness was gnawing away at Fredrika’s body. She didn’t want to go home until she had made some progress in the investigation. Peder was interviewing Rebecca’s supervisor, and wouldn’t have time to ring the techies before Fredrika went home for the weekend. Her hand hovered over the telephone as she gazed out of the window. The sun was tempting; it made the brown metal on the building opposite shimmer in countless different shades. Why didn’t she go home?
They answered straight away.
‘I’m calling about the website “Dreams Come True”.’ How stupid did that sound?
‘The job we got this morning?’
‘I’m just calling on the off chance, I know you haven’t had enough time yet, but…’
‘We’ve got quite a long way. As far as we can, actually. The website is still there, and it looks pretty bloody kinky. Several of the girls on there are definitely under fifteen.’
‘What kind of website is it?’
Her voice was hesitant; she didn’t really want to know.
‘The principle is the same as for ordinary Internet dating, although in this case it’s only girls who upload their profiles, and it’s exclusively for sex. Imagine sex as an extreme sport. I mean, nobody would visit this site to find the woman he’d want to spend the rest of his life with.’
Sex as an extreme sport – the twenty-first century’s distorted view of what constituted good sex.
‘Did you manage to find Rebecca’s profile?’
‘We didn’t think it would be possible at first, but we managed to identify the website’s administrator.’
Fredrika was surprised.
‘How come?’
‘All websites have an administrator. This one is run by a guy who owns a porn shop in the Söder district. If you go and speak to him, he should be able to help; you’ve got her alias. Just because you take pictures down from a website, that doesn’t mean they’re gone forever. He’ll have kept them, guaranteed. Push him hard; as I said, there are some very young girls on that website.’