‘I gather I’m no longer regarded as a suspect in your investigation,’ he said.
‘That’s right.’
Fredrika swallowed hard and pushed a few stray strands of hair off her face.
‘So you won’t be needing a new passport after all.’
Spencer looked as if he was about to laugh, but then his face closed down again. Fredrika could feel her agitation growing.
‘We need to talk, but it’ll have to wait until I get home.’
‘And when will that be?’
‘Later. Late, in fact.’
Spencer pulled on his jacket, which he had been holding, and moved towards the door.
‘I never meant to lie to you,’ he said.
Fredrika felt the tears threatening once more.
‘Don’t do it again, Spencer.’
He shook his head slowly.
‘But you lied too.’
‘I didn’t lie, I withheld information. And there’s a big difference.’
He smiled sadly.
‘Maybe.’
Then he was gone.
Fredrika stood there alone. She wrapped her arms around her body. She felt alone when she was on her own, alone when the two of them were together.
Alex walked in.
‘Who was that?’
She assumed he was referring to Spencer.
‘That was the father of my daughter.’
Alex looked so shocked that she burst out laughing, but the laughter was accompanied by fresh tears.
‘Sorry,’ she said quickly, dabbing at her eyes.
Alex placed a hand on her shoulder.
‘Listen, if you need to take a break and go home for a while, that’s fine.’
It was almost four o’clock; there was no time to ‘take a break’.
‘I’m staying until we’re done,’ Fredrika replied. ‘How did it go with Morgan Axberger?’
‘He wasn’t in his office. His secretary said he’d gone to an emergency meeting.’
‘Do we believe that?’
‘We do at the moment, but not for much longer. We’ve made it very clear that we want to speak to him on an important matter, and he still chooses to stay away. Valter Lund, on the other hand, was where we expected him to be, and now he’s here.’
Fredrika grabbed her notepad and pen.
‘He’s got a lot of explaining to do.’
‘He has,’ Alex agreed. ‘But he’ll have to wait, because first you’re going to speak to someone called Malena Bremberg.’
‘Malena Bremberg?’
Fredrika was surprised; she tried to place the woman’s name. Wasn’t she the care assistant who had been so shy when they met her at the care home?
Peder walked past the door on his way down the corridor, then turned and came back.
‘I’m going out to look for Jimmy again.’
To look for the brother who had been missing for almost twenty-four hours. The brother who had vanished without a trace; it seemed as if he had disappeared without a single person having seen a thing.
Except for Thea Aldrin, who refused to speak.
The feeling of unease that had haunted Fredrika during the meeting came flooding back. It was something Alex had said. A thought that had passed through her mind so quickly that she hadn’t managed to grab hold of it.
Alex’s phone rang, and he answered. Peder raised a hand in farewell and set off down the corridor.
‘That was one of the lads out at the grave site in Midsommarkransen,’ Alex said. ‘They’re packing it in now. The hole has been filled in, and they’ll be removing the police tape shortly.’
There.
The same thought once more.
An icy hand clamped itself around Fredrika’s heart.
‘You said someone had been there during the night and started filling in the crater,’ she said.
‘Some bloody idiot, no doubt,’ he said. ‘Short of something to do.’
‘We need to open up the grave,’ Fredrika said.
Alex looked at her as if she had lost her mind.
‘Jimmy,’ she whispered. ‘I think they buried him there last night.’
60
In the dream, Jimmy was flying higher and higher on the swing. His whole face was beaming as he shouted to Peder:
‘Can you see me? Can you see how high I’m going?’
Then he was falling.
Or flying through the air.
Peder usually woke up the second before Jimmy hit the ground. It was as if his mind was protecting him from the painful, inevitable outcome. Peder had seen his brother’s skull and his life smashed to pieces against a stone once, and that was enough.
His mother rang while he was in the car on his way back to the assisted living complex.
‘You need to go home and get some rest.’
Her voice was fractured with anxiety.
I’ve already lost one son, don’t make me go through that same hell all over again.
‘I’m OK, Mum.’
‘We’re worried about you, Peder. Can’t you come home and have something to eat?’
We. That must mean his parents and Ylva. Eat? Peder couldn’t remember when he last ate. Was it the previous evening, when he and Ylva were sitting on the balcony? It felt like such a long time ago.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To Jimmy’s. To Mångården, I mean.’
‘Call me soon. Promise?’
‘I promise.’
He pulled into the car park a while later. He slammed the car door and marched straight into the complex, where the residents were in the middle of a meal. One of the girls who worked there got to her feet as Peder walked in.
‘I can find my own way,’ he said, and headed for Jimmy’s room.
He closed the door behind him and stood there in the middle of the floor, searching for something out of the ordinary, some indication of where Jimmy might have gone. But nothing was missing, nothing was damaged. Nothing.
He can’t just have walked out into the night and disappeared.
‘Peder.’
The care worker’s voice made him jump.
‘Yes?’
He turned around and saw her standing in the doorway with one of Jimmy’s friends. Had they knocked before opening the door? He couldn’t be sure.
‘Michael has something he wants to tell you.’
Michael. A young man Peder had met on countless occasions. He was well-built, with dark hair. He suffered from some indefinable impairment that meant he was trapped in eternal childhood, like Jimmy. He loved Jimmy, and thought that Peder was the coolest guy in the whole of Sweden, because he was a cop.
‘What is it, Micke?’
‘I’m not really allowed to say.’
Peder forced a smile.
‘Of course you are. I’m a cop, aren’t I? I can keep a secret.’
‘Jimmy said he saw a man standing out there spying.’
He pointed towards Thea Aldrin’s room on the other side of the lawn.
‘Was it a secret?’
Michael nodded importantly.
‘Yes. That’s what he said. He said it was a secret. That’s why I thought I’d better not mention the other thing until now.’
‘What other thing?’
‘I saw Jimmy leave his room yesterday. I was looking out of my window, and I saw him go over to that lady’s room and stand outside. He looked in through her window.’
Michael swallowed. Peder was fighting to maintain his composure.
‘Then what happened?’
Michael hesitated, but decided to keep going.
‘A man came out of the lady’s room. Through the door. Onto the patio. He spoke to Jimmy, but only for a second. Then they went off.’
Peder’s heart skipped a beat.
‘Where, Micke? Where did they go?’
‘I don’t know. They went to the car park and drove off in a car. They didn’t come back. I waited all night. I kept thinking he’d be really cold; he didn’t have any shoes on.’
There were secrets that were just too big to keep. Secrets that couldn’t be accommodated inside a normal body, a normal heart; they demanded more and more space as time went by.
Malena Bremberg looked as if she was carrying just such a secret. Her face was pale and weary as Fredrika greeted her. She refused coffee, but said she would like a cup of tea.