‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘Or it could have been some animal getting at the transmitter. But I don’t think that’s very likely in this case, because the problem was only just outside Flemingsberg station.’
Fredrika nodded to herself.
‘Thanks, that’s all for now,’ she said, committing the man’s name to memory. ‘I expect I’ll be back in touch soon with a few more questions or a formal request for a written statement.’
When she had rung off, she gripped the steering wheel hard.
She scarcely dared to think what the investigating team had lost by not following up such an obviously important line of enquiry.
It might simply mean, of course, that Gabriel Sebastiansson had been working with the woman in Flemingsberg. Fredrika swallowed. She didn’t really think that, but that was how she would present it to the team. She’d never get the authorization to pursue it any further, otherwise.
Fredrika felt anything but elated. It was a wretched business from start to finish. Fredrika’s vision clouded as she wondered whether Sara would be able to summon the strength to identify her dead child.
Some years before, Alex couldn’t recall exactly how long ago, his mother-in-law had been admitted to hospital. The diagnosis, incurable cancer of the liver and pancreas, had plunged Lena into despair. How could her father carry on? How would it be for her and Alex’s children growing up without their grandma?
Alex had not been too worried for the children’s sake. Naturally they would miss their grandma, but their sense of loss could hardly be compared with what his father-in-law would go through.
‘We’ve got to be there for Dad now,’ Lena said the evening they heard the bad news.
‘Yes of course,’ Alex replied.
‘No, more than that,’ Lena said. ‘More than that, of course, Alex. These are the times people need all the support and love they can get.’
The memory of the time his mother-in-law lay ill ached in Alex as he sat there in Sonja Lundin’s office at Umeå University Hospital. Hugo Paulsson sat beside him.
Sonja Lundin was the pathologist who had reached a preliminary verdict on the cause of Lilian’s death.
‘We weren’t initially sure which forensic unit was going to take the body,’ Sonja Lundin said with a frown. ‘We don’t know where the crime was committed, of course, here or in Stockholm.’
Alex stared at Sonja Lundin. She was very tall for a woman, and looked very much on the ball. Alex was drawn to people with that look. He had occasionally reflected that Fredrika Bergman had it, too. Shame she had such shortcomings in other departments.
‘But we checked what happened in previous cases, and decided we had to do at least an initial examination here, so as not to hold up the police in their preliminary enquiry,’ Sonja Lundin went on. ‘So now it’s done.’
She gave them a swift summary of what she had found.
‘There’s nothing to indicate the child was subjected to any violence or, from what I could see with the naked eye, any sexual assault,’ she began, and Alex felt himself give a slight sigh of relief.
Sonja Lundin noticed, and held up a hand.
‘I really do have to stress that sexual assault can’t be ruled out until after a more thorough examination.’
Alex nodded. Naturally he knew that.
‘At first I couldn’t work out what had killed her,’ said Sonja Lundin, frowning again, ‘but because her head was shaved, I soon discovered it when I looked a bit closer.’
‘Discovered what?’ asked Hugo.
‘A wound in the middle of the head. And a much smaller puncture at the back of the neck.’
Hugo and Alex both instantly raised their eyebrows.
‘I can’t say for certain without more comprehensive tests and examinations of course, but my preliminary conclusion is that someone tried to stab the girl in the head, and when that didn’t work, injected poison into her neck instead, and that was what killed her.’
Hugo, looked at her, his brow furrowed:
‘Is that a usual way of going about it?’
‘Not that I’m aware,’ said Sonja. ‘And it’s not clear why they would try to stab her skull first, anyway.’
‘Can you say what poison was used?’ asked Alex.
‘No, we’ll need to run tests before we can say,’ she said, with a defensive gesture.
Hugo couldn’t keep still.
‘But,’ he began, ‘would she have been conscious when they stabbed her? I mean…’
Sonja smiled slightly. It was a warm smile.
‘I know what you’re wondering,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid I have no answer to that. The girl could have been given some kind of sedative first, but I’m afraid I can’t confirm that either, at this point.’
There was silence. Hugo quietly cleared his throat and Alex caught himself fiddling with his wedding ring.
He cleared his throat, too, a bit more loudly than Hugo.
‘And what’s the procedure now?’ he asked.
‘Your colleague knows that better than I do,’ said Sonja Lundin, nodding in Hugo’s direction.
‘We wait for the mother and grandparents to identify the child,’ he said firmly. ‘Unless we manage to link the case more closely to Umeå in the course of the day, the girl’s body will be sent to the forensic unit down in Solna this evening, so the complete autopsy will be done there. When did you say the mother and her parents were due?’
Alex glanced at his watch.
‘They should be landing in about an hour.’
Fredrika was very happy to find Peder far too absorbed in his own activities to ask where she had been and why she hadn’t gone to see Gabriel’s mother yet.
Peder was just preparing a draft application to the examining magistrate when Fredrika came into his office.
‘We’re going to get him detained in his absence,’ said Peder, his eyes unnaturally wide open from the sudden boost to his adrenalin level.
Other than that, he looked pretty rough. What had he been up to since the evening before? He really did look quite wild.
Fredrika chose not to comment on Peder’s appearance out loud.
‘And we’re going to get a search warrant from the magistrate,’ he went on. ‘So get yourself off to his old ma’s. You said he had a room there, didn’t you?’
Fredrika stopped short. Had she said that?
‘Yes,’ she said eventually, ‘he has.’
‘Right, then we need a warrant to let us search his house in Östermalm, his room at his mother’s, and his office,’ said Peder.
‘What are we looking for, officially I mean?’ said Fredrika.
‘Officially we’re looking for child porn, unofficially every fucking thing that can give us a clue where the guy’s got to. I just spoke to Alex, and it sounds as if the kid had poison injected straight into her head. So sick it’s beyond belief.’
Fredrika swallowed. Yet another grotesque detail that had no natural place in the way she viewed the world.
‘We’re getting extra backup,’ Peder added. ‘Two more investigators to help us interview all the friends and acquaintances.’
‘Okay,’ Fredrika said guardedly.
She considered asking who was standing in for Alex in his absence, but was reluctant to ask a question to which she didn’t want to hear the answer. Finally she asked it anyway.
‘Alex said I was,’ Peder said, so triumphantly that Fredrika felt rather sick.
He’d been waiting for her to ask, just so he could answer. Typical of her to fall into the trap.
‘But Alex will be back this evening,’ Peder added, ‘unless we come up with anything to link this mess to Umeå.’
Then he went on:
‘I’ll take one of the new pair with me out to Gabriel’s company and introduce him there. Gabriel and some of his colleagues seem to have been big buddies, so he might just have confided in them. You can set the other one – it’s a girl – to work on the people Sara knows.’
Fredrika was about to comment on this when he burst out: