Then her mobile rang, forcing her to break off from the list she had barely started to compile. It was a man’s voice on the line.
‘Am I speaking to Fredrika Bergman?’
‘Yes, you are. And who am I speaking to?’ said Fredrika.
‘I’m Martin Ek, from SatCom. We spoke briefly the other evening, when you rang to ask about Gabriel Sebastiansson,’ the man replied.
SatCom, the company in which Gabriel had been working his way up over the past ten years, and was now one of the top executives.
Fredrika was immediately alert.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘Well,’ Martin Ek began, sounding relieved that she remembered him. ‘You asked me to ring if Gabriel got in touch, so I kept your card.’
‘Ah, right,’ said Fredrika with a little gasp. ‘And he’s been in touch now?’
Martin Ek initially said nothing. Fredrika sensed he was on the verge of hanging up.
‘We haven’t heard from him.’
Fredrika’s shoulders slumped a fraction.
‘But I think I may have found something you’d be interested in seeing,’ he gabbled.
‘Okay,’ said Fredrika guardedly, pulling paper and pencil towards her. ‘What have you found, exactly?’
Another pause.
‘I’d really rather you came over and saw for yourself,’ he said.
Fredrika hesitated. She had neither the time nor the inclination to go over there. And anyway, it was really Peder who ought to be dealing with this contact, since he was the one following up Gabriel Sebastiansson’s circle of acquaintances.
‘You won’t even give me an idea of what this is about?’ she asked. ‘We’ve got a huge amount on at the moment.’
Martin Ek was breathing heavily at the other end of the line.
‘It’s something I found on his computer,’ he said finally.
He took a few more deep breaths before he went on.
‘Photos. Disgusting photos. I’ve never seen anything so bloody sick. I’d really, really appreciate it if you could come round. Straight away, if possible.’
Fredrika felt her throat constrict.
‘I’ll ask my colleague to get back to you right away. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
Fredrika was about to ring off when Martin Ek added:
‘But please come quickly.’
The desert.
Thirst.
Pain. A whole head full of pain.
Peder Rydh was hung over and barely awake when Alex rang to tell him that a little girl who in all probability was Lilian Sebastiansson had been found dead in Umeå. Alex also told him to get round to Sara’s and make sure she, or one of Lilian’s other close relations, caught the ten o’clock flight to Umeå. Alex would be on that plane himself, and would meet whoever was going at the airport. He also instructed Peder to pull out all the stops to work out how Umeå fitted into the picture.
Peder’s first reaction was one of near panic.
How the hell could the child be dead?
She had been missing fewer than forty-eight hours, and since getting the information from the woman sitting beside Sara and Lilian on the train, they’d been looking for the girl’s father, suspecting him of involvement in her disappearance. Had Gabriel Sebastiansson gone off his head? Had he murdered his own daughter and dumped her outside a hospital?
Then came his second reaction: Where the fuck was he?
Peder fought desperately against the hangover, which was completely paralysing his powers of thought. Several long seconds passed before it dawned on him that he had fallen asleep at Pia Nordh’s. Heck, this was going to be tricky to explain to Ylva.
The phone had woken Pia, and she lay on her side, watching him. She was naked and her expression was quizzical. She realized from the short call that something very serious had happened.
‘They’ve found her,’ Peder said curtly, getting up from the bed far too fast.
The floor rocked beneath his feet, his head throbbed and his eyes ached. He sat down on the edge of the bed and rested his head in his hands. He’d got to think, pull himself together. He ran his fingers through his hair and reached for his mobile again. He had a missed call from Jimmy and eleven from Ylva, who had admittedly been told to expect him home late, but would hardly have expected him not to come home at all. When had he rung her, exactly? His memories of the previous evening were one big whirl, impossible to separate out. Had he rung at all, when it came to it? The shadow of a recollection flitted by. Peder, half undressed in Pia’s bathroom. One hand on the washbasin for support, keeping himself upright, the other hand holding his mobile, sending a text.
‘Don’t wait up. Back later. Speak soon.’
Peder wanted to crawl out of his own skin. This wasn’t good. Or rather… it didn’t get any worse than this. If this wasn’t rock bottom, then he didn’t want to be part of it all any longer.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said gruffly, and stood up again.
His legs carried him all the way from the bedroom, out into the hall, into the bathroom. How much had he drunk? How many beers had it added up to?
He was just getting out of the shower when he heard his mobile ring again. He raced out of the bathroom, almost skidding on the wet floor tiles. Pia met him in the hall, his mobile in her hand.
It was Fredrika.
‘There was a call from the place where Gabriel Sebastiansson works,’ she said tersely. ‘They want one of us round there at once, to see something they found on Gabriel’s computer. Some horrible photos.’
Peder retreated into the bathroom so as not to drip all over Pia’s hall floor, but had to come back out again because there was no signal in there. He tried to towel himself one-handed with the towel while he was still on the phone.
‘Right,’ he began, ‘Alex has asked me to make sure Sara Sebastiansson knows what’s happened first. Then I can deal with the Gabriel thing.’
He could hear Fredrika was about to say something, so he went on quickly:
‘What sort of photos, anyway? We can’t just go checking people’s computers without getting the examining magistrate to grant a search warrant.’
Fredrika informed Peder with her usual cheek – always that cheek – that she was quite well aware the police couldn’t go snooping in people’s computers whenever they felt like it, but that this could be viewed as a tip-off in a very important investigation, and there was no law forbidding the police from going to look at something somebody else had discovered and…
‘Okay, okay,’ Peder interrupted her wearily. ‘Give me their number and I’ll ring them now and arrange something.’
‘Good,’ said Fredrika, sounding a bit washed out herself.
‘They didn’t say anything about what was in these pictures?’ Peder asked.
‘No,’ said Fredrika, ‘they just said they were disgusting.’
‘What are you going to do now, by the way?’ Peder enquired curiously.
‘Alex asked me to go and see Mrs Sebastiansson again,’ Fredrika said. ‘And there are a few other things I need to get done…’
‘Wasn’t I supposed to be handling the interviews with Gabriel’s family and friends from now on?’ Peder said irritably.
‘Clearly not this one,’ came Fredrika’s crisp retort.
Peder ended the call with a scowl and went back into the bathroom.
Pia appeared at the doorway. She was still stark naked. Peder looked at her in the bathroom mirror. Was she really that attractive when it came to it? He thought her tits looked a bit on the droopy side. Or was his hangover clouding his judgment? Well it was all the same to him, he was on his way out of the flat anyway.