‘In that case, you will be jeopardising the inquiry,’ he said.
A little more brusque than necessary, perhaps, but he was hoping to make Peder see reason. At the same time he could see his team falling apart. Fredrika’s partner had been arrested; Peder’s brother was missing.
He would have to request additional resources, that was all there was to it.
Peder said something in a subdued voice.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said I don’t know what I’ll do if we don’t find him. I think I could fucking kill the person who takes Jimmy away from me.’
‘There’s nothing to suggest that he’s dead,’ Alex said. ‘Nothing at all.’
He was trying to reassure Peder, but he could tell that his colleague wasn’t listening.
‘He called me,’ Peder said.
‘Jimmy?’
‘He called to tell me that someone was standing outside looking in through a window. Someone who frightened him.’
Alex was confused.
‘Someone was looking in through Jimmy’s window?’
‘No, through another window. And Jimmy saw him and he was scared. That’s what he said when he rang me. “It’s a man. He’s looking in through the window. He’s got his back to me”.’
50
The ground gave way beneath Malena Bremberg’s feet as she ran. She could feel her pulse pounding in her body as she forced it on, kilometre after kilometre. Two years ago, she had been like any other student. She had finally decided what she wanted to do at university, and had managed to find student accommodation and a part time job at Mångården care home.
It had taken time for Malena to get her life on the right track; there had been many diversions. Her high school years were a fog of binge drinking, countless love affairs and poor marks. She hated thinking back to that time; she didn’t want to dwell on the life she had lived in those days. After leaving school, she had spent several years working abroad. As an au pair. As an undernourished model. As a holiday rep.
She came home feeling emptier than ever.
‘Your life belongs to you and you alone,’ her father had said. ‘You’re the one who chooses how you’re going to live. But if you choose not to live your life at all, that will make me very sad.’
She enrolled on adult education courses that same autumn. Started working in a clothes shop. Carefully built herself a new life, made new friends. Friends who were very different from the ones with whom she had surrounded herself in the past. She didn’t have a boyfriend; for the first time, she didn’t need one.
She celebrated the most important day of her life when she was finally accepted to study law at the University of Stockholm. Success gave her the taste for more. She knew what it had cost her to gain that place, and now she was determined to make progress, to forge ahead. If you were over thirty it was high time you knew what you wanted to be when you grew up.
At first, she had believed they had met by chance, at an opening event for a new, unusual restaurant on Stureplan. Suddenly he had appeared by her side, standing just a little too close. It had bothered her to begin with, but the feeling didn’t last long. She had allowed herself to be flattered by his compliments and his presence – all too easily.
And his voice. That deep, almost hypnotic voice had made her blush, and however much she wanted to, she just couldn’t stop listening. Helpless. That was how she had felt.
She remembered that her friends had seen them together and wondered what she was playing at. He was so much older than her. Admittedly he was a man with power and wealth, but above all he was older. She had dismissed their words as nothing more than envy.
Warning bells had rung at an early stage, when he had started asking questions about Thea Aldrin. She hadn’t made the connection immediately, hadn’t realised that he had known all along where she worked, and that was why she was interesting.
With hindsight, she felt nothing but embarrassment and revulsion. She had allowed herself to be seduced and led astray by a man with an agenda that could only be described as sick. Because it had seemed so exciting, because there was a part of her that would never be like everyone else, that would never be a good girl. The desire had come from nowhere, the desire to do what was dangerous, what was taboo. She had played with fire, and she had almost been consumed by it. While he documented the whole thing on film.
51
It was half-past eight by the time Fredrika got to work. Alex was surprised to see her.
‘I thought you’d be staying at home with your daughter today.’
‘My mum’s looking after her. I can’t just stay at home. I have to keep busy.’
Alex didn’t question Fredrika’s reasoning. However, he did make it clear that she couldn’t be involved in their dealings with Spencer.
‘I’ve sent another officer over to Uppsala to carry out a formal interrogation,’ he said. ‘I assume that will put an end to the matter from our point of view. But I’d like to hear what he has to say about the film club and its members; he might also be able to tell us something about Thea Aldrin.’
Fredrika nodded.
‘Why isn’t Peder interviewing him?’ she asked.
Alex went pale as he told her about Peder’s brother. Fredrika’s eyes filled with tears, and she sat down on one of the chairs in Alex’s office.
‘What the hell is wrong with you two?’ Alex said when he saw her reaction. ‘We’re bound to find him. He’s probably gone for a walk and got lost. I’m sure that kind of thing can happen with someone like Jimmy.’
Fredrika could see that Alex believed what he was saying, and she admired him for that. Personally, she was up to her eyes in crap, and couldn’t manage one single positive thought.
‘Is he coming in later?’ she asked.
‘Maybe. We’ll see.’
Fredrika opened her bag.
‘With regard to the film club,’ she said. ‘Something occurred to me this morning. Something that has nothing to do with Spencer.’
Alex watched as she took out her papers. She glanced over at him; there was something unfamiliar about his face, as if it had acquired a patina of tranquillity that had not been there before.
She lost focus for a moment, and had to think about what she had been going to tell him. Then she remembered. Alex looked sceptical.
‘So you think that Torbjörn Ross, who has been a colleague of mine since the 1980s, was in touch with Rebecca Trolle before she died? And that he then withheld this information from the investigating team?’
Fredrika swallowed. The sleepless night had taken its toll.
‘I think it’s possible, yes.’
She pushed Rebecca’s notes across the desk. Pointed to the word at the bottom. Snuff.
‘It’s just a word,’ Alex said.
‘It’s his word,’ Fredrika replied. ‘He’s the one who thinks the books were filmed.’
Alex thought for a moment.
‘Ask Ellen to go through the list of calls,’ he said. ‘Check whether Rebecca called the police, either via the switchboard or to a direct line. We might have missed it, thinking she’d contacted the police for a completely different reason.’
Fredrika got to her feet.
‘I’ll do that right away.’
‘And if Peder doesn’t come in, I’d like you to sit in on the interview with Valter Lund. He’ll be here in an hour.’
‘And Thea Aldrin?’ Fredrika asked.
‘What about her?’
‘Aren’t we going to speak to her as well?’
‘Find out where she’s living these days, and we’ll go and see her later. Not that I think it’ll make much difference, if she never speaks anyway.’
Fredrika had one more question.
‘What’s our thinking on Morgan Axberger? Don’t we need to talk to him too?’
Alex suppressed a sigh.
‘We’ll hang fire on that. Let’s tackle one thing at a time.’
Fredrika hurried to her office, then went to see Ellen, who promised to check Rebecca’s phone records as soon as possible.