Had she eaten anything after she was abducted?
The pathologist took a few moments to answer.
‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘No, it doesn’t look like it. Her stomach was entirely empty. But if she was kept drugged for a period, that’s not so surprising.’
‘Can you tell us anything about where the body’s been?’ Alex asked wearily.
‘As they noted in Umeå, the body had been at least partly washed with alcohol. I looked for traces of the perpetrators under her nails, but I didn’t find anything. In a few places I was able to secure the remnants of a particular kind of talc, which shows they wore rubber gloves, the sort they have in hospitals.’
‘Can they be got hold of anywhere else?’
‘We’ll have to do some more tests before I’m completely sure, but they probably are hospital gloves. And they’re not difficult to get hold of if you know somebody who works at a hospital, but you can’t just buy them at the chemist’s.’
Alex nodded thoughtfully to himself.
‘But if the murderer had access to hypodermic needles and hospital alcohol and gloves…’ he began.
‘Then it’s likely one of the people involved moves in health service circles,’ the doctor finished for him.
Alex went quiet. What had the pathologist just said…?
‘You always talk about the murderer as if it was more than one person,’ he said enquiringly.
‘Yes,’ said the pathologist.
‘But what are you basing that on?’ asked Alex.
‘I do beg your pardon, I thought you’d been given that information when you were up in Umeå,’ the pathologist apologized.
‘What information?’
‘The girl’s body is completely undamaged apart from the lesion to the scalp. She hasn’t been subjected to any kind of external bodily harm and nor has she been sexually abused.’
Alex sighed with relief.
‘But,’ the pathologist went on, ‘there are distinct sets of bruises on her arms and legs. They were probably the result of a struggle as someone tried to hold her down. One of the pairs of hands that made them was very small, probably a woman’s. Further up the arms there are also larger bruises, which appear to have been inflicted by much larger hands. Probably a man’s.’
Alex felt his chest tighten.
‘So there are two of them?’ he said. ‘A man and a woman?’
The pathologist’s hesitation was audible.
‘Could be, yes, but I can’t be entirely sure, of course.’
He went on:
‘But I can say that the bruising must have occurred several hours before the child died. Possibly when they were shaving her head.’
‘The woman held her down while the man shaved her,’ Alex said softly. ‘And Lilian put up too much of a fight, so they changed places. The woman shaved and the man held her down.’
‘It’s possible,’ said the pathologist again.
‘It’s possible,’ said Alex under his breath.
By the time Fredrika Bergman got to Uppsala, the picture of the woman who had held up Sara Sebastiansson in Flemingsberg was already all over the media. Fredrika heard it on the radio as she pulled up outside Maria Blomgren’s.
The police are now looking for a woman who is thought to have been…
Fredrika switched off the engine and got out of the car. The media were now following the Lilian case extremely closely. They didn’t know all the repulsive details yet, but sooner or later they would get their hands on them. And then all hell would break loose, that was for sure.
It was warmer in Uppsala than in Stockholm. Fredrika remembered she’d always thought so when she was a student as well. It was always a bit hotter in Uppsala in summer, and a bit colder in winter.
As if you were travelling to an entirely different part of the world.
Meeting Maria Blomgren soon shook Fredrika out of her reverie. Maria Blomgren looked unmistakably as though she came from exactly the same part of the world as Fredrika herself.
We even look a bit like each other, thought Fredrika.
Dark hair, blue eyes. Maria was perhaps a little fuller in the cheeks, a bit taller and slightly darker-skinned. Her hips were broader and more rounded.
She must have had a baby, thought Fredrika automatically.
And Maria gave an even more earnest impression than Fredrika, if that was possible. She did not smile until she had seen Fredrika’s ID. Then she smiled a thin little smile showing not even a glimpse of her teeth.
But there was not much reason to smile, when it came to it. Alex Recht had called Maria Blomgren in advance to explain what the visit was all about. Maria said she didn’t think she had anything particular to tell them, but of course she would cooperate with the police.
They sat down at the kitchen table. Sand-coloured walls, white mosaic tiles, modern kitchen units. The table was elliptical in shape, and the chairs were hard and white. Apart from the walls, almost everything in the kitchen was white. The whole flat was pedantically tidy and looked clinically clean.
So different from Sara Sebastiansson’s, thought Fredrika. It was quite hard to imagine the two women once having been best friends.
‘You wanted to ask me about that summer in Umeå?’ Maria said straight out.
Fredrika delved in her handbag for her notebook and pen. Maria was demonstrating unequivocally that, while not unwilling to talk to the police, she wanted it over and done with as soon as possible.
‘Maybe you could start with how you and Sara became friends? How did you get to know each other?’
Fredrika detected distinct hesitation in Maria’s face. Then scarcely perceptible irritation. Her eyes darkened.
‘We were friends in upper secondary,’ said Maria. ‘My parents separated around then and I had to change schools. Sara and I happened to be in the same German group; we were with the same German teacher for three years.’
Maria fiddled with the vase of beautiful flowers on the table in front of her. It struck Fredrika that she had not been offered so much as a glass of water.
‘I don’t really know what sort of things you want me to tell you,’ Maria said slowly. ‘Sara and I soon became close friends. Her parents were going through some sort of crisis just then, too, and arguing a lot. We understood each other, both being in the same boat. We were both typical model pupils, the kind who lend their pens to everybody and don’t like the sort of classmates who disrupt lessons.’
When Maria raised her eyes, Fredrika saw moisture glinting in them.
She’s grieving, thought Fredrika. That’s why she’s being so buttoned up. She’s grieving for the relationship she and Sara once had.
‘In the last year at secondary school, Sara changed,’ Maria went on. ‘She wanted to rebel. Started wearing make-up, drinking and messing around with boys.’
Maria shook her head.
‘I think she got tired of it. That phase ended pretty quickly, round about the time her parents got back together again. I think they’d separated for a while, but I’m not sure. Anyway, on the whole things were fine again. And then we went on to college and made sure we were on the same course. We’d already decided what we wanted to be: interpreters at the UN.’
Maria laughed heartily at the thought, and Fredrika smiled.
‘You were both good at languages?’
‘Yes, oh yes, our German and English teachers couldn’t praise us enough.’
Maria’s look turned grave again.
‘But then Sara had more trouble at home. Her parents changed church and Sara didn’t get on with the new, stricter rules they suddenly expected her to follow.’
‘Church?’ Fredrika echoed in surprise.
Maria raised her eyebrows.
‘Yes, church. Sara’s parents were Pentecostalists, and there was nothing odd about that. But then a group of them broke away and started a Swedish branch of an American Free Church movement. They called themselves Christ’s Children, or something like that.’
Fredrika listened with growing interest.