Peder rang the team that was busy with Gabriel Sebastiansson’s office. His computer had been taken away and its contents would be scrutinized as soon as they assembled a team of volunteers willing to deal with such distressing material. The computer’s email correspondence would be looked at separately, and considerably more quickly. Gabriel’s boss also confirmed that Gabriel had the use of a laptop belonging to his employer, but he had no idea where it was. As might have been expected, the team had found no trace of any child pornography in the office apart from what was on the computer.
Peder then tried to talk to the new investigator he had put onto interviewing Gabriel’s colleagues, but he said he was busy interviewing and promised to ring back within the hour.
Peder did not know quite what to make of the information generated by the search to that point. It was satisfying to have confirmation that Gabriel was deliberately avoiding the police. It was also good to have confirmation that his mother had lied to protect her son. It was very good that they now knew where he had been over the past few days.
And yet…
Why was he stupid enough to keep child pornography on his computer at work, when he had a laptop? Why had he hidden at his mother’s, when he could reasonably expect that to be the first place the police would look? And if it was Gabriel Sebastiansson who murdered Lilian, had the murder taken place at his mother’s house? Had the child’s grandmother even been an accomplice?
Peder felt instinctively that she could not have been. But could Gabriel have had Lilian in the house without his mother knowing? If one supposed the child had been sedated, or something like that? Probably not.
Peder looked around him. Was this really the house where Lilian died? If that were the case, he wanted the examining magistrate’s immediate permission to turn the entire place upside down to find the scene of the crime. Though Alex had told him in their most recent phone call that the hospital reported Lilian had died of some form of poison, injected into her skull. A murder like that wouldn’t exactly leave many clues behind.
Then something struck Peder. Mats the analyst had said Gabriel’s phone hadn’t once gone north of Stockholm. But it had clearly gone south. If you assumed Gabriel had had his phone with him the whole time, how the heck could Lilian’s body have been taken to Umeå?
Fatigue descended on Peder once again. His brain refused to cooperate and his headache came back with a vengeance.
Then he had a call from the colleagues searching Gabriel Sebastiansson’s home in Östermalm. They had not found anything much except a large box of sex toys. It was debatable whether that could be considered abnormal. They had also seized a number of unlabelled DVDs. It was possible that they might yield something.
‘Did you find any trace of the child in the flat?’ Peder asked disconsolately.
‘She’s got her own room in the flat, of course,’ came the answer, ‘but no, we can’t say we found anything to indicate she’s been here over the past few days. In fact no one seems to have been here at all. No rubbish in the kitchen bin, and the fridge has been left empty. Either no one’s been here for a while, or somebody came in and cleared out the fridge.’
Peder was inclined to think the latter. It would be interesting to know whether the flat’s landline had been used in recent days. But then on the other hand, Gabriel Sebastiansson’s boss said Gabriel had been at work as usual all the previous week, and he’d been at the office as late as last Saturday.
Then something had happened to make Gabriel go to ground, take some leave at short notice and lie to his mother about a business trip. Why had he been so heavy-handed about it, though? It was obvious his mother was incredibly loyal to him. Yet if there was one iota of decency in the woman, that loyalty could not extend to child pornography and child murder.
Peder went back to the others in Gabriel’s bedroom and told them he was going to look in on the Östermalm flat. He left the house. Teodora Sebastiansson and her lawyer had locked themselves away in the living room, and Peder saw no need to inform them of his departure.
A strange and overwhelming sense of relief flooded over him as he came out onto the gravel drive where his car was parked. He stared for a few moments at the big, brick mansion. Then he stared at the plot of land it was built on, the size of a park. At this particular spot on earth, time had stood still for far too long.
Jelena nervously put the key in the front door. Her hand always shook a bit when she was excited or nervous. Just now she was both of those things. She had done it. She had done absolutely everything the Man had instructed her to do. She had driven the car up to Umeå, got rid of the Foetus in almost exactly the way and exactly the place he wanted, and then caught the plane back. No one had seen her, no one had suspected what she was doing. Jelena was sure she had never performed better in her whole life.
Silence received her as she shut the door behind her.
She fumbled as she took off her shoes and arranged them precisely beside each other, the way the Man always insisted their shoes should be lined up in the little hall.
‘Hello,’ she said tentatively, going further into the flat. ‘Are you there?’
She took a few more steps. Wasn’t it strangely quiet?
Something was wrong, so wrong.
He suddenly detached himself from the shadows. She sensed rather than saw the great fist coming towards her and hitting her right in the face.
No, no, no, she thought desperately as she flew backwards through the air and landed hard on her back, her head hitting the wall.
Pain and fear were throbbing in her body, which had learnt that in situations like this, by far the safest thing was not to react at all. But the blow was so unexpected and so ominous that she almost wet herself in terror.
He came swiftly towards her and pulled her to her feet. There was blood running from one corner of her mouth and her head was spinning. Darts of pain were shooting through her back.
‘You bloody whore, you complete bloody misfit,’ he hissed through clenched teeth, and his eyes seethed with a fury she had never seen before.
‘Oh no, no, please, somebody help me,’ she mumbled to herself.
‘She should have been lying in a foetal position,’ he said, holding her face so close to his own that she could see every tiny detail of it. ‘She should have been lying in a foetal position and quite apart from that – quite apart from that! – what the fucking hell was she doing on the pavement? How bloody hard can it be to understand?’
He yelled the last bit with such force that she was struck dumb.
‘I…,’ she began, but the Man broke in.
‘Shut up!’ he yelled. ‘Shut up!’
And when she made another attempt to explain, explain that there hadn’t been time to arrange the Foetus exactly as they – as he – had planned, nor in exactly the right place, he yelled at her again to shut up, and silenced her with another punch in the face. Two punches. A knee in her stomach. A kick in her side once she was on the floor. Ribs cracked, making the same sound as when frosty branches snap in a forest in winter. Soon she could no longer hear his yelling or feel his blows. She was scarcely conscious as he tore off her clothes and dragged her into the bedroom. She began to whimper as she saw him get out the box of matches. He kept her quiet by stuffing a sock in her mouth, and then lit the first match.