‘Well done, Fredrika, well done!’ said Alex, elated.
Fredrika’s face flushed blood red at the unexpected praise, and Peder looked as though he might like to kill himself. Or possibly Fredrika.
‘Well maybe we should go after him on a charge of assault and battery?’ he suggested in an attempt to grab a bit of attention at the table.
He ignored the fact that Fredrika had said the same thing a few seconds before.
‘Definitely,’ said Alex, nodding in agreement. ‘We’re not crossing him off the list until we find him. Issue an arrest warrant, for the assaults on his wife.’
Peder gave a slight nod.
Fredrika stared at him with an empty expression.
Ellen broke in.
‘There was a woman who rang a little while ago,’ she began hesitantly.
Alex absent-mindedly scratched a mosquito bite. Those blessed mosquitoes; surely they got earlier every year?
‘Yes?’
‘Well,’ sighed Ellen, ‘I don’t really know what to say. She wouldn’t identify herself and what she told me was, er… a right old jumble, to put it mildly. But basically it came down to her thinking she knew the man who’s taken Lilian.’
Everyone round the table turned their eyes to Ellen, who gave a deprecating wave of her arm.
‘I mean, she sounded confused. And scared. But it wasn’t at all clear what of. She said she thought it was a man she’d once been in a relationship with, and he had hit her.’
‘Which we know Gabriel Sebastiansson did, hit the woman he’s got now,’ Alex put in.
Ellen carried on shaking her head.
‘It was something else,’ she said, trying to get her thoughts in order. ‘She said she had nightmares that made him cross, and…’
‘What?’ interrupted Peder.
‘Yes, it was something like that she said. About her having nightmares and the guy getting angry. He was waging some campaign he wanted her to get involved in.’
‘What kind of campaign?’ asked Fredrika.
‘I couldn’t make it out,’ sighed Ellen. ‘The whole thing was a jumble, like I said. Something about some women not deserving their children. Something about her being his doll, him using dolls somehow. But it was all pretty unintelligible.’
‘And she didn’t give his name? The man who hit her?’ said Alex slowly.
‘No,’ said Ellen. ‘And like I said, she wouldn’t tell me her name, either.’
‘But you got the technical department to trace the call?’ asked Alex.
Ellen hesitated.
‘Er, no, I didn’t,’ she admitted. ‘It felt so weird, not serious. And you always get a few loonies ringing at times like this. But I can ring the technical unit as soon as the meeting’s over,’ she added.
‘Good,’ said Alex. ‘My guess is that your assessment of it is about right, but it does no harm to check who the caller was.’
He was about to go on when Fredrika signalled that she, too, had something to say.
‘Unless the woman wasn’t confused at all, just scared,’ she said.
Alex frowned.
‘If the woman’s been a victim of abuse, she might have turned to the police on other occasions, and felt she got no support. In that case, she’s pretty traumatized by her whole relationship with the police service, and she’s probably also still afraid of her ex. And in that case…’
‘Wait a bloody minute!’ Peder interrupted in frustration. ‘What do you mean, “traumatized by her relationship with the police”? It’s not the police force’s fault that nearly every bit of skirt who rings in and reports her guy takes him back time after time after time…’
Fredrika wearily held up her hand.
‘Peder, that’s not what I’m saying,’ she said calmly. ‘And I don’t think we need a debate on police tactics for preventing assaults on women right now. But if, and I mean if, she has been abused and felt she didn’t get any protection from the police, she’s probably very scared indeed. And that means it would be stupid to dismiss the call as confused.’
‘But if we think the whole thing through,’ interrupted Alex, ‘isn’t it a bit odd that she’s rung as soon as this?’
Nobody said anything.
‘What I mean is, how much do the media know as yet? The fact that a child has gone missing. That’s all. We haven’t told them about the parcel with the hair and there isn’t really anything to point to the girl having suffered anything worse than all the other kids reported missing in the course of a year.’
Each individual group member digested what Alex had said.
‘I still tend to think she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about,’ he concluded. ‘But of course we ought to follow up the call. We can’t exclude the possibility that it was Gabriel Sebastiansson she had a relationship with.’
‘But there must have been something in the story that she recognized from what her ex had told her,’ persisted Fredrika. ‘You’re quite right, Alex, when you say how little information we’ve released. It must be some tiny detail that caught her attention and rang a bell for her, and distinguished this story from all the other stories about missing children. And we can’t take it for granted that it actually is Gabriel Sebastiansson popping up here again…’
Alex had had enough, and quite forgot that he had been full of praise for Fredrika just a moment before.
‘Right, let’s get on with the meeting,’ he said brusquely. ‘There are always a variety of leads in an investigation, Fredrika, but for now we only have the one, and it looks very plausible, to say the least.’
Alex turned to the National Crime Squad analyst, whose name he couldn’t for the life of him recall.
‘Have any other witnesses been in touch? Any train passengers?’
The analyst was quick to nod. Oh yes, lots of people – lots and lots – had got in touch. Almost all the passengers from carriage number 2 where Sara and Lilian had been sitting. None of them could remember hearing or seeing anything. All of them could definitely remember seeing the child asleep, but nobody remembered anyone coming to fetch her.
‘The first time I talked to Sara, she said she and her daughter had chatted a bit with a woman sitting on the other side of the aisle. Has she rung in?’ Fredrika wanted to know.
The analyst took a sheaf of paper out of a plastic folder.
‘If the lady was sitting straight across the aisle,’ he said, extracting a sheet of paper, ‘that would mean she was in seat number 14. Nobody’s been in touch from seats 13 or 14.’
‘Let’s hope they soon will be,’ muttered Alex, rubbing his chin.
His eyes were drawn to the window. Somewhere out there was Lilian Sebastiansson. Most likely in the company of her sadistic father, who was prepared to stoop to anything to terrify his ex-wife. He fervently hoped they would find the girl soon.
Then Ellen’s mobile rang and she slipped out of the room to answer it.
‘Peder,’ Alex said decisively, ‘I want you to deal with the warrant for Gabriel Sebastiansson’s arrest. I also want you and Fredrika to get a second interview with as many of his and Sara’s family and friends as you can. Try to find out where on earth he might be.’
Or, thought Fredrika to herself, we might even find out something that gives us some new leads.
She chose not to say anything out loud.
Alex was about to round off the meeting when Ellen popped her head round the door:
‘Our prayers have been answered,’ she said. ‘The lady sitting just across from Sara and Lilian on the train has just rung in.’
At last, thought Alex. At last things are starting to move.
Peder Rydh took Ingrid Strand’s statement in one of the interview rooms on the same floor as the reception desk. The day had started so chaotically he could hardly get his thoughts in order. He was glad he had a colleague sitting in on the interview with the new witness. Otherwise there was an undeniable risk that Peder might miss some of the information she had to offer. Ingrid Strand might be sitting on the last crucial lead for solving the case, and he needed to be on the ball.