He swore to himself and went back to HQ to pick up Alex so they could head off to interview Sara Sebastiansson again.
Then out of the blue, he had a phone call from Ylva. Her voice was strained and she wanted to talk about what had happened the previous evening. Peder said he would have to ring her back later; he was busy at the moment. Her call was an irritant and stressed him out. They were so indescribably remote from each other at the moment. They seemed to be living in separate worlds even when they were together. Sometimes it felt as though the boys were the only things they had in common.
Sara was sleeping and could not be woken when they visited her. The doctor who had been summoned that morning had given her a very effective sedative. Peder looked at her lying there on one side in her bed. A pale face framed in a tangle of red hair. A summery, freckled arm sticking out from under the cover. Another arm with a big burn that was just starting to heal. A blue bruise on her calf. Evil was fond of bright colours, Peder thought wearily.
Alex was in the kitchen, talking quietly to Sara’s parents, who were keen to tell him about all their son-in-law’s acts of cruelty to date. They had written down the names of people the police might be interested in talking to. It was a short list. Sara was very isolated, thanks to that dreadful husband of hers.
‘She was never able to hang on to her friends,’ said Sara’s mother. ‘Scarcely a single one.’
They warned Alex and Peder to be wary of Sara’s mother-in-law. They had admittedly only met her once, at the wedding. But she had made a lasting impression on them.
‘She’d go through fire and water for her son,’ sighed Sara’s father. ‘She’s not quite right in the head, that woman.’
Peder took the list of names and telephone numbers provided by Sara’s parents with some help from her mobile phone. With Alex at the steering wheel on the way back to Kungsholmen, Peder started ringing round. The reaction at the other end was always the same. Oh no, not again. Was it so bad this time that the police had been called in? What had that madman taken it into his head to do now? No, nobody had heard from him or had any idea where he could be.
‘But try talking to his mother,’ said one man Peder spoke to, once a good friend of Sara and Gabriel.
Peder put his mobile away in his jacket pocket and spared Fredrika a fleeting thought.
‘To be quite honest, I imagined my son would meet a different sort of girl,’ said Teodora Sebastiansson, breaking the silence that had descended after Fredrika Bergman accepted the offer of a cup of coffee.
Fredrika raised an interested eyebrow over the cup she had brought to her lips.
Teodora fixed her gaze on something behind Fredrika. For a second, Fredrika felt tempted to turn round, but she took another sip of coffee instead. It was too strong, but was served in beautiful little cups that her grandmother would have sold her own grandchildren to drink out of.
‘You see,’ Teodora said rather hesitantly, ‘I had certain expectations of Gabriel. Really just the sort all parents have of their children, but he showed us quite early in life that he wanted to go his own way. I suppose that was why he chose Sara specifically.’
She took a discreet sip of her coffee and put the cup back down on the table in front of her. Fredrika asked guardedly:
‘Have you any idea how their relationship actually worked, Sara and Gabriel’s?’
She realized her mistake a split-second later. Teodora sat back even more stiffly in her chair.
‘If you are asking whether I, as Lilian’s grandmother, have been informed of all the hateful lies my daughter-in-law has been spreading about my son, the answer is yes. I believe I told you that when we spoke on the telephone.’
The message was not difficult to interpret – either Fredrika backed off, or the interview would be brought to an immediate end.
‘I realize this may be a sensitive issue,’ said Fredrika hoarsely, ‘but we are actually in the middle of a very serious investigation here, and…’
Teodora interrupted by leaning across the table that separated them and fixing her with eyes of steel.
‘My grandchild – not yours, mine – one of the most precious things I have, is missing. Do you think,’ she hissed, ‘do you think you need to spend a single second telling me how serious the situation is?’
Fredrika took a deep breath and refused to drop her eyes, though she could feel herself shaking.
‘Nobody doubts how anxious you are,’ she said with a composure that surprised her. ‘But it would be a very good idea for you to answer our questions, so we felt you really were trying to cooperate with us.’
Then she explained about the parcel that had been delivered to Sara that morning. Once she had finished, the room remained in eerie silence, and for the first time since her arrival, Fredrika saw she had managed to say something that Teodora took to heart.
‘We’re not saying,’ Fredrika went on, stressing the word ‘not’, ‘that your son is mixed up with this in any way. But we must – I repeat must – get hold of him. We can’t and won’t ignore the information about him that has come to our attention. About his and Sara’s marriage. And there’s no way we can cross him off our list of key people until we’ve spoken to him.’
There was no list of key people, but all in all, Fredrika felt pretty satisfied with her exposition. If she had not had Teodora’s full attention before, she certainly had it now.
‘If you do know where he is, this would be a really useful time to tell us,’ Fredrika said, quietly but forcefully.
Teodora slowly shook her head.
‘No,’ she said at last, so quietly that Fredrika hardly heard the word, ‘I don’t know where he is. All I know is that he was going to be away on business yesterday. That’s what he said when I spoke to him on the telephone on Monday. We talked about him and little Lilian coming to dinner here, once Sara was back from the latest of all those trips she drags the poor child along on.’
Fredrika observed her.
‘I see,’ she said, and then leant across the table herself. ‘The only problem is,’ she said, with a slight smile, ‘that according to Gabriel’s boss, he’s been on leave since Monday.’
She felt her heart beat extra fast as she saw the colour drain from Teodora’s face.
‘So naturally we’re wondering why he lied to his own mother about that,’ she went on mildly.
She sat back again.
‘Unless there’s anything else you want to tell me?’
Teodora said nothing for a long while. Then she declared:
‘Gabriel never lies. I refuse to call what he told me a lie, before he has himself admitted that it really was one.’
She pursed her lips and her colour slowly returned. She looked Fredrika in the eye.
‘Are you conducting the same thorough investigation of Lilian’s mother?’ she said, her eyes narrowing.
‘In a case like this, we investigate everyone in the child’s immediate vicinity,’ Fredrika replied tersely.
Teodora clasped her hands on the table in front of her and smiled a wry, superior smile.
‘My dear girl,’ she said sternly, ‘it really would be most unfortunate if you didn’t take a closer look at Sara.’
Fredrika sat up straighter.
‘As I say, we’re looking at everyone who…’
Teodora held up a hand to interrupt her.
‘Believe me,’ she said, ‘you and your colleagues would gain a lot of time by focusing more on all those people Sara allows to come and go as they like in that flat.’