Fredrika took a few hesitant steps into the flat. The light hall began to look a little familiar, and the living room off to the left. That was where she had interviewed Sara’s new boyfriend that first evening.
How long ago it felt.
Sara’s parents filed in behind her. Like a fighting unit, ready to attack. Fredrika said hello and shook their hands. Yes, that’s right, they had met before. When the box of hair… yes, then.
Hands pointed, indicating where Fredrika was to go. She was to sit in the living room. The settee felt hard. Sara sat in a big armchair, her mother perched on one of its armrests. Her father took a seat on the settee, a little too close to Fredrika.
Fredrika would really have preferred not to have Sara’s parents in attendance. It was wrong, and broke all the rules where the art of interrogation was concerned. She felt instinctively that there were things that could not be said in their presence. But both Sara and her parents were demonstrating very clearly that either Fredrika spoke to all of them together, or to no one.
A big, old grandfather clock dominated one corner of the room. Fredrika tried to recall whether she had noticed it there before. It was two o’clock.
I’ve been efficient, thought Fredrika. I’ve been to Uppsala and HQ and home to pack.
Sara’s father cleared his throat to remind Fredrika she was not making very good use of her time.
Fredrika turned to a new page of her notebook.
‘Well,’ she began cautiously, ‘I’ve got a few more questions about your time in Umeå.’
When Sara looked blank, she clarified:
‘When you were on the writing course.’
Sara nodded slowly. She tugged at the sleeves of her top. She still did not want the bruises to be seen. For some reason, this brought a lump to Fredrika’s throat. She swallowed several times and pretended to read through her notes.
‘I interviewed Maria Blomgren this morning,’ she said eventually, raising her eyes to look at Sara again.
Sara did not react in any way.
‘She asked to be remembered to you.’
Sara went on staring at Fredrika.
Maybe she’s on tranquillizers, thought Fredrika. She looks drugged up to the eyeballs.
‘Sara and Maria haven’t been in touch for years,’ Sara’s father said brusquely. ‘We told your boss that, in Umeå.’
‘I know,’ said Fredrika quickly. ‘But a few things came up in my chat with Maria that mean I need to ask a few more questions.’
She tried valiantly to catch Sara’s dulled eye.
‘You were going out with a boy just before you went up there,’ she said.
Sara nodded.
‘What happened when you broke up?’
Sara shifted in her seat.
‘Nothing much happened,’ she said slowly. ‘Nothing at all, really. He sulked and made things awkward for a while, but he let me go once he realized we weren’t compatible.’
‘Was he ever back in touch later? After the summer maybe, or did he even turn up in Umeå?’
‘No, never.’
Fredrika paused for thought.
‘You stayed on in Umeå longer than Maria,’ she began. ‘Why was that?’
‘I got a summer job there,’ Sara said listlessly. ‘It was too good an offer to refuse. But Maria was cross. And jealous.’
‘Maria says you knew before you went to Umeå that you weren’t coming home to Gothenburg when the course was over, and that you fixed up the summer job before you went.’
‘Then she’s lying.’
Sara’s answer came so rapidly and vehemently that Fredrika almost lost her thread.
‘She’s lying?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why would she lie about something like that that happened so long ago?’ Fredrika asked warily.
‘Because she was jealous of me getting that chance when she didn’t,’ Sara said fiercely. ‘She never got over it. She even used it as an excuse for backing out of our plan to share a flat in Uppsala.’
Sara seemed to shrink in the armchair.
‘Or maybe she misunderstood the whole thing,’ she said wearily.
‘Maria told me she had a summer job waiting for her back home in Gothenburg,’ said Fredrika. ‘Hadn’t you?’
Sara appeared not to understand.
‘I mean, hadn’t you got anything planned for the rest of the summer? The course in Umeå was only going to last a fortnight, after all.’
Sara’s eyes had a shifty look.
‘Once I got the chance to work there, I couldn’t just throw it away,’ she said quietly. ‘That had to take priority.’
Sara’s mother shifted uneasily on the arm of the chair.
‘But it’s just come back to me that I ran into Örjan who ran that guest house where you used to work in the summer holidays, and he said you’d turned down the job he offered you that year, because you were going to be out of town all summer.’
Sara’s face darkened.
‘I can’t help what that old man went round saying,’ she hissed.
‘No, of course not,’ Sara’s father put in. ‘And our memories let us down at times like this. We all know that, don’t we?’
He knows, thought Fredrika. He knows Sara’s trying to hide something, but he doesn’t know what it is. He knows it’s something worth hiding, and that’s why he’s helping her out.
‘All right,’ said Fredrika, trying to find a more comfortable position on the settee. ‘What happened when you got there, then? How come you were the one to be offered this job?’
‘They needed an assistant for the writing tutor,’ Sara said quietly. ‘And my creative writing was so good, they thought, so they made me the offer.’
‘Sara’s always been good at writing,’ her father added.
‘I don’t doubt that,’ Fredrika said honestly. ‘But I imagine it must have felt quite competitive in the writing group. We all know what it’s like at that age…’
‘No one else seemed put out,’ Sara said, tugging at some strands of her hair. ‘They said when we arrived that they were looking for an extra staff member for the rest of the summer, and that anyone interested could let them know.’
‘And then they chose you?’
‘And then they chose me.’
It went quiet. The hand of the grandfather clock took another peck forward. Outside, the sun went behind a cloud.
‘She’s lying,’ Fredrika said indignantly into the phone when she rang Alex to report on her way out to the airport.
Alex listened to her story and then said:
‘I’m not saying there’s nothing there worth getting to the bottom of, Fredrika. But Sara’s very sensitive at the moment, and her parents are watching over her like hawks. See what you get from the Umeå trip and then we’ll decide how to take this forward.’
‘I can’t stop thinking about that boyfriend she had,’ Fredrika went on. ‘According to Maria Blomgren, he went a bit crazy when Sara chucked him.’
‘He must have been more than a bit crazy if he was angry for fifteen years and then got even by killing Sara’s little girl,’ sighed Alex.
‘I’ve got his ID,’ said Fredrika. ‘I rang and asked Ellen to run a records check, and he seems to have had a finger in various pies since he left school.’
‘Like what?’ Alex enquired dubiously.
‘He was found guilty of beating up his ex’s new boyfriend,’ answered Fredrika. ‘And receiving stolen goods. And car theft.’
‘Certainly sounds like the criminal type, but not exactly capable of carrying out something as well planned as Lilian’s abduction,’ Alex objected.
‘But still,’ Fredrika persisted.
Alex sighed.
‘Where does this crook live nowadays, then?’
‘He seems to move about a lot, but at the moment he lives in Norrköping. He moved away from Gothenburg after he finished his military service.’
Alex sighed again.
‘Jönköping, Norrköping, Umeå,’ he said crossly. ‘This investigation’s getting totally farcical. It’s far too spread out.’
‘But at least it’s moving!’ Fredrika persevered.