Peder read the social services report again. Then he flicked randomly through the album. The photographs showed the little family in various settings. At Christmas and Easter. On holidays and outings.
‘We tried,’ said Birgitta Franke, her voice faltering. ‘We tried, but we just couldn’t.’
‘Do you know what happened to her afterwards?’ asked Peder. ‘After she left you?’
‘She went into some kind of residential treatment centre for six months, but she must have run away, oh, ten times or more. Once she even came back here. Then they tried to place her with another family, but that didn’t work out, either. And then all of a sudden she turned eighteen and wasn’t a minor any longer, and since then I haven’t heard a thing about her. Until I saw the picture in the paper, that is.’
Peder gently closed the album in front of him.
‘But how did you recognize her?’ he asked. ‘I mean, I can see some similarities between the drawing and the girl in your photos, but…’
He shook his head.
‘How do you know it’s the same girl?’
Birgitta’s eyes shone.
‘The necklace,’ she said with a smile. ‘She’s still wearing the necklace we gave her at her confirmation, just before she moved out.’
Peder grabbed up the identikit picture of the woman at the station. He had not registered the fact before, but sure enough she had a necklace on. It was a silver lion on a chunky silver chain.
Birgitta opened the album again, and flicked through to the middle.
‘See?’ she asked, pointing.
Peder did see. It was the same necklace. The necklace in conjunction with the photo was enough to convince him. It must be the same girl.
‘She was obsessed with star signs,’ Birgitta told him. ‘That was why we gave it to her. At first she didn’t want to get confirmed at all, but we tempted her with a course at a lovely centre out in the archipelago, and said we’d give her a nice present, too. We thought that kind of social group might be good for her. But she made trouble, of course. She stole things from the others, it emerged later.’
Birgitta began clearing the table.
‘That was when we decided we’d had enough, really,’ she said. ‘If you steal when you’re on a confirmation course, then there can’t be much decency in you. But we let her keep the necklace, since she liked it so much.’
Peder started noting down Monika’s details from the social services report. Monika Sander. Then he had a better idea.
‘Could I take this with me and make a copy?’ he asked, waving the document at Birgitta.
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘You can post it back to me. I like to keep tabs on which foster children I’ve had.’
Peder nodded.
He took the papers and got up slowly from the table.
‘And if anything else occurs to you, do give me a ring,’ he said in a friendly tone, putting his card on the table.
‘I promise I will,’ said Birgitta.
She added, ‘I must say, we never thought she would turn up in such ghastly circumstances.’
Peder stopped.
‘However could she have got drawn into such a web of horrible events?’
‘That’s what we’re wondering,’ said Peder. ‘That’s just what we’re wondering.’
Fredrika Bergman reached Umeå late in the afternoon. By the time the plane landed, her whole body was aching with fatigue. She turned on her mobile to find she had two new messages. It would be too late now, unfortunately, to interview Nora’s grandmother and Sara’s course tutor before the next day. She looked at her watch: it was almost half past five. Her flight had been delayed. She shrugged. There wasn’t really any rush. As long as she got the interviews done tomorrow, everything would be fine.
Fredrika had not had a chance to ring Peder with the background story on Sara’s ex as she had promised. She hoped he had somehow managed to get the information he needed before the interview.
Though she was tired, Fredrika felt strangely buoyed up. The investigation had finally broadened out, and in some peculiar way, she felt it was now on the right track. She wondered briefly where their first main suspect Gabriel could now be. It seemed likely his mother would have helped him leave the country. Fredrika gave a shiver at the thought of Teodora Sebastiansson’s house. There was something creepy about the whole property.
The evening sun was caressing the tarmac as Fredrika left the terminal building. While she waited for Alex to answer his phone, she allowed herself to stand with her eyes closed, basking a little in the sunshine. A warm breeze stirred the air.
Spring weather, thought Fredrika. This isn’t summer weather, there’s spring in the air.
Neither Alex nor Peder were answering their phones, so Fredrika resolutely picked up her case and walked towards the nearest taxi. She had booked a room in the plush old Town Hotel. Maybe she could treat herself to a glass of wine on the verandah while she drew up the outline of the next morning’s work. Maybe while she was there she could have a proper think about the phone message from the adoption centre, too?
Fredrika almost panicked when the message came into her mind. Was she going to be called on to a decision at last? Was it time to start planning for life as a single mother? She suddenly found herself sobbing.
She tried to take a few deep breaths. She did not know why the call had upset her so much. There was no reason to be reacting like this. It was ludicrous for everything to come to a head this very minute, at a kerbside outside the terminal building at Umeå Airport. She looked about her in confusion. Had she ever been here before? She didn’t think so. She could not recall it if she had.
Fredrika’s phone rang as she got to the taxi. She and the driver slung her bags into the boot and she climbed into the back seat to take the call.
‘Another child’s been taken, a baby girl,’ Alex said, the strain audible in his voice.
Fredrika’s whole attention was suddenly focused. There wasn’t enough air in the back seat of the taxi. She pressed the button and the glass slid down.
The driver protested from in front.
‘You can’t just open the window like that!’ he barked. ‘What about my air conditioning?’
Fredrika hushed him with an urgent gesture.
‘How do we know it’s got anything to do with our case?’ she asked Alex.
‘About an hour after the baby went missing, the police found a parcel on the edge of the flowerbed near the front door of the block, and it had the baby’s clothes and nappy in it. And he’d chopped off a tiny tuft of hair that her mother had put a hairslide in.’
Fredrika did not know what to say.
‘What in God’s name…,’ she began, and was taken aback by the force of her own language. ‘What do we do now?’
‘We work round the clock until we find whoever did this,’ Alex answered. ‘Peder should be in Norrköping to talk to Sara Sebastionsson’s ex just about now, and then he’s coming straight back to Stockholm. I’m on my way to the car to go and see the missing baby’s mother.’
Fredrika swallowed hard, several times.
‘Check if she’s got any links with Umeå,’ she said in a weak voice.
‘I most certainly will,’ said Alex.
Fredrika could tell from the sounds at the other end that Alex had reached his car.
‘It all seems to be happening faster this time, if it’s the same man,’ she said slowly.
She heard Alex pause.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘Sara didn’t receive her parcel of hair until the day after her daughter went missing. But you’re telling me these clothes and hair were delivered to the parents almost as soon as the baby had gone.’
Alex said nothing for a moment.
‘Shit, you’re right,’ he whispered.
Fredrika shut her eyes, the phone clamped to her ear. Why was the perpetrator suddenly in such a hurry? And why take another child so soon after the first? And… if the clothes and hair had already been given back to the parents, did that mean the baby was already dead?