When the film was over, Alex sat there in stunned silence. He watched it again. And again. Then he ripped it from the projector and raced up to Torbjörn Ross’s office.
‘What made you think the film wasn’t genuine?’
‘It was just too much of a spectacle to be real. We thought it had been made in the ’60s, obviously inspired by the spirit of the age. And we didn’t find a murder victim with injuries consistent with those sustained by the woman in the film.’
‘And that was it?’
Ross shrugged.
‘For a long time, I believed the film was genuine, but in the end I was convinced by the fact that we didn’t have a murder victim. I mean, she would have been missed by someone. As far as I was concerned, that didn’t really matter anyway. The film was sick, and the person who made it must have been equally sick.’
Alex thought about the mythology surrounding snuff movies, the contention that the victims were usually people who could easily disappear without being missed by anyone.
‘Thea Aldrin. You think Thea Aldrin made this film?’
He held out the reel in his hand.
‘She was definitely involved,’ Ross snapped. ‘The links to her disgusting, filthy books were too obvious. The scene where the woman dies in a summerhouse was in both books. There’s no other explanation.’
Alex finally lost his temper.
‘For fuck’s sake, we don’t even know if she actually wrote the bloody books! And you thought the film wasn’t real!’
‘We found Thea’s friend Elias Hjort, we found out the royalties were paid to him. And guess what, Alex? When we went to bring him in for questioning, we were told that he’d left the country. What’s that worth today, now we know he hadn’t left the country at all? He was dead.’
‘Your only link to Thea Aldrin was Elias Hjort,’ Alex said. ‘And that bloody film club.’
‘And the rumours. There’s no smoke without fire; you know that as well as I do.’
Alex shook his head.
‘The film is real,’ he said.
The colour drained from Ross’s face.
‘Real?’
‘I’ll show it to the forensic pathologist, but I’m absolutely certain. The young woman who dies in this film is the young woman who was sharing a grave with Rebecca Trolle.’
Spencer called when Fredrika was on her way back to HQ from the care home.
‘They’ve let me go.’
Emptiness in her soul, warmth in her breast.
How far apart have we drifted?
‘Have they dropped the case?’
‘No, but there wasn’t enough evidence to suggest that I was likely to abscond for them to arrest me. They’ve blocked my passport; I can’t apply for a new one until all this is over.’
Fredrika said nothing. The whole thing had gone beyond the point where words were even possible.
‘I wasn’t the only one who was keeping secrets. And your secrets were my secrets.’
She heard what he said, but was incapable of taking in the words.
She wanted to say that she hadn’t been keeping any secrets at all, but she knew it was a lie. Several days had passed since Spencer’s name first came up in the investigation; several days of silence.
Then again, no silence was worse than Spencer’s. He had changed their life in order to hide his problems. Said he wanted to take paternity leave, when in fact he was running away from a difficult situation at work, a situation that could well cost him both his job and his future.
‘I could have helped you,’ Fredrika said.
‘How?’
‘Given you some advice.’
That wasn’t true, and she knew it. There was nothing she could teach Spencer in that respect, nothing she could use to support him. All the same, she felt as if he had rejected not only her professional expertise, but her heart and her love. In his hour of need, she had not been permitted to be there for him.
And it hurt like hell.
‘See you at home.’
He ended the call. Fredrika drove into the underground car park, then hurried upstairs. Peder wasn’t there, of course – he had said he was going to carry on looking for Jimmy – and there was no sign of Alex either.
Ellen came to see her. Morgan Axberger had been in touch after Ellen had spoken to his secretary, at Alex’s request. He had promised to call in later that afternoon.
‘Since when do people decide when they’d like to be questioned?’ Fredrika wanted to know.
‘Since we started contacting leading figures within Swedish industry,’ Ellen replied.
One of the officers who had found Håkan Nilsson’s boat called; Håkan was still missing.
Fredrika felt a creeping sense of anxiety as she put the phone down. They had assumed that Nilsson had taken off in order to get away from the police, but they could have been wrong. Perhaps he thought his life was in danger, and that he had to find somewhere safe to hide? But in that case, why hadn’t he spoken to the police and asked for protection?
She went over the many events of the day. The meeting with Valter Lund hadn’t been as helpful as she had hoped; it had merely generated yet more confusion with regard to his identity. It was obvious that he was trying to hide something, but what? And did the fact that Valter Lund might not be the person he claimed to be actually have anything to do with the case?
A man with his roots in Gol, outside the beautiful area of Hemsedal. A man who, on paper, had had a catastrophic upbringing, and had no living relatives. Unless you counted a bewildered uncle who turned up at the local police station every year to ask if his nephew had been found. An uncle who obviously didn’t recognise his nephew in pictures of Valter Lund.
Then there was the meeting with Thea Aldrin. A woman who had chosen to live in self-imposed silence for decades; she had been convicted of premeditated murder, and since her release she had spent all her time in a care home. Could there really be a connection with Jimmy’s disappearance, or was the fact that they were neighbours no more than a coincidence?
I don’t believe in coincidences any more.
Rebecca Trolle had obviously felt the same way, because she had pursued the tip-off about the snuff movie, assumed that it was somehow relevant. Fredrika and her colleagues had yet to fully appreciate the connection with the dead bodies; they only knew that there was allegedly a link between Thea Aldrin and the snuff movie. Fredrika reminded herself that Alex was taking care of that particular line of enquiry; in fact, he was probably working on it right now.
The corridor was eerily silent. Fredrika went along to Alex’s office: still empty. Everyone else seemed to be out too. She returned to her own office. There was only one way out of this mess that kept on sending them back to Thea Aldrin and her silence: the flowers that were delivered to the care home every Saturday.
The helpful assistant had quickly found the name of the supplier: Masters Flowers, a shop on Nybrogatan in Östermalm. Fredrika decided not to waste any more time on speculation, and gave them a call.
‘I’m ringing about the flowers you deliver every Saturday to a lady by the name of Thea Aldrin.’
‘I’m afraid we operate a policy of strict confidentiality when it comes to our clients. They have the right to rely on our discretion.’
‘Obviously, we will treat any information you give us with great care, but we are in the middle of a murder inquiry, and I really do need your help.’
The shop owner was still hesitant, and Fredrika thought she was going to have to get a warrant from the prosecutor to make him talk.
‘It’s a standing order,’ he said eventually. ‘We’ve made the same delivery every week for more than ten years. Payment is made in cash; the client’s representative comes to the shop once a month. A woman.’