‘Tell me about the other members. Are you still in touch with them?’
‘No, not at all,’ Spencer replied. ‘After Thea Aldrin ended up in prison and Elias Hjort moved abroad, that left just Morgan and me. And we had very little in common, I must say. It was only natural that we stopped seeing each other.’
Spencer thought for a moment.
‘The film club was dissolved around 1975-6. I never really understood why, but that’s what happened. By the time Thea Aldrin was charged with murder, the film club hadn’t met for several years.’
Cecilia Torsson looked interested.
‘Could there have been disagreements you were unaware of?’
‘It’s possible, of course, but I don’t know what they could have been about. If you speak to Morgan Axberger or Elias Hjort, I’m sure they’ll be able to tell you more. Thea could tell you plenty as well, of course, but if what it says in the papers is true, she hasn’t spoken since she went to prison.’
‘How did the other members of the group react? To the fact that she’d murdered her husband, I mean?’
Not at all, Spencer thought. He hadn’t seen Morgan or Elias after Thea was arrested. He remembered ringing Morgan to talk it over. Morgan, who had known Thea’s ex, had been shocked and refused to discuss what had happened.
‘We had virtually no contact at all by then,’ Spencer said. ‘I was the youngest of the four, and I hadn’t been a member from the start. I didn’t know Thea’s ex, or anything about their relationship. But obviously I was horrified when I found out what she’d done.’
‘So you never questioned her guilt?’
Spencer shrugged.
‘She confessed.’
The air in the room was stale, the walls grubby. How much longer would he have to sit here talking about things he hadn’t done, hadn’t been involved in?
‘There were rumours that Thea Aldrin was the author of Mercury and Asteroid. Was that the case?’
‘Not as far as I knew. We discussed the matter, of course, but not in any detail. It was just a piece of particularly nasty gossip, nothing else.’
He felt a sudden spurt of anger at all the attempts that had been made to ruin Thea’s reputation. It had been sheer persecution, as if some powerful force was secretly working to destroy everything she had achieved. Spencer hadn’t understood the background at the time, and he didn’t understand it now.
‘Her son went missing,’ Cecilia said. ‘Do you remember anything about that?’
‘Of course,’ Spencer replied. ‘You could say that was the beginning of the end for her. She never got over the loss, and who can blame her? Although by that time the film club had already broken up, and I hardly ever saw her.’
‘But there were more rumours; people said she’d killed her son as well.’
Spencer shook his head.
‘It was absolutely bloody ridiculous. The boy disappeared and didn’t come back. I have no idea what happened to him, of course, but I think I can say with some certainty that his own mother didn’t kill him.’
The watch on Cecilia Torsson’s wrist flashed as it caught the light on the ceiling.
‘So what do you think happened to him?’
Spencer no longer needed to make an effort to recall the events of all those years ago. He remembered exactly what he had thought when the boy went missing.
‘Thea rarely mentioned her son or her relationship with him, but I know they quarrelled quite a lot. He kept asking where his father had gone, and he didn’t treat her with the respect she wanted from him.’
The words stuck in his throat; for some reason, they were more difficult to get out than they had been at the time.
‘OK, they quarrelled,’ Cecilia said. ‘And?’
‘And I think he ran away from home. That’s what I’ve always thought. He was a very enterprising young man.’
‘You think he ran away and had some kind of accident, which is why he’s never been found?’
‘No,’ said Spencer. ‘I think he left with the intention of never coming back. And I think he’s still alive.’
52
The place was crawling with police. Thea Aldrin sat in her room watching them from her window, struck dumb with horror.
How could it have happened again?
How could the events that had taken place in the ’60s still be claiming victims? Because Thea had no doubt about the fate that had befallen the boy who had been standing in the flowerbed outside her window. Nor had she been capable of preventing it.
Boy wasn’t really the right word. He was a man, but it was obvious almost straight away that there was something not quite right about him. The look in his eyes would haunt Thea for the rest of her life: a grotesque mixture of pleading and incomprehension that almost made her stop breathing.
There was a time when she had believed she would enjoy a rich and happy life. A time when she and Manfred had fallen in love, when they made their co-habitation into a political issue and refused to get married, even when she became pregnant. She had never felt that Manfred found it difficult to cope with her success. Quite the opposite, in fact: he had praised her to the skies with deep sincerity.
But none of the things she had taken for granted had been true, and none of the things she had held sacred had remained untouched. She could still recall the fear that had made her chew her own tongue as she watched the images flickering on the screen. And the powerlessness that followed when she confronted him.
‘It’s not real, for fuck’s sake!’ he had bellowed.
As far as Thea was concerned, that was of minor importance. She didn’t want to be anywhere near a man with desires of that kind. Nor did she want him anywhere near her unborn child.
He had been so easy to drive away, and she had always taken that as an indication that the film was in fact genuine. That a murder really had been committed. In her parents’ summerhouse, which she had visited countless times. With fear clutching at her throat, she had tried to find proof of what had happened there. She found nothing. And yet she knew that they had been there, that they had destroyed everything. Manfred and someone else, someone who was holding the camera. It wasn’t until several years later she found out who that someone was.
If only she hadn’t given up the film on the night he moved out. That was the price she had to pay: Manfred refused to leave without the film.
‘I don’t trust you,’ he had said. ‘If you’re sick enough to believe the film is real, then I don’t know what to think of you any more.’
So she had given him the film and assumed she had seen the last of him. Perhaps she should have realised what a terrible error of judgement that was. Everything that followed was undoubtedly a consequence of the first catastrophe. But she couldn’t have known how badly things would turn out. If she had had any idea, she would have acted differently a long time ago.
Many things frightened her as she sat there alone in self-imposed silence. Had anyone heard what had happened in her room yesterday evening? Had anyone seen the boy disappear? And, almost more significantly, had anyone heard Thea speak?
53
There was no time for rest or recuperation. Peder Rydh decided not to go home and sleep as Alex had suggested. Instead he drove around the streets yet again, then went back to the assisted living complex.
He remembered his brother’s earlier phone call with absolute clarity.
It’s a man. He’s looking in through the window. He’s got his back to me.