‘As I said on the phone, I don’t remember much of those years,’ he said curtly.
And before Fredrika could comment, he added:
‘I’m a recovered alcoholic, and the time you’re asking about was a bad patch for me.’
Fredrika gave a slow nod.
‘As I tried to explain,’ she said, ‘my questions aren’t particularly detailed.’
Magnus put up his hands as if acknowledging defeat.
‘I found some paperwork from that summer,’ he sighed. ‘I’ve always been terrible at throwing out old papers.’
He put a green file on the table between the two of them. The sound of the file banging down on the tabletop made her jump.
‘Who is it you want to know about?’ Magnus said gruffly.
‘Someone called Sara Lagerås,’ replied Fredrika quickly, congratulating herself on remembering Sara’s maiden name.
Magnus stared at a document in the file.
‘Yep,’ he said at length.
Fredrika’s brows knitted.
‘Yep,’ he said again. ‘I’ve got her here. She was from Gothenburg, wasn’t she?’
‘That’s right,’ said Fredrika.
‘And now she’s lost her kid? The one that was on the news?’
‘Yes.’
Magnus uttered an indeterminate sound.
‘I’ve just got a few questions,’ said Fredrika, adjusting her blouse as she sensed Magnus’s eyes on her cleavage.
Magnus gave a slight smile and raised his eyes. He said nothing.
‘Can you see from your paperwork whether Sara stayed on as an employee of the centre when the writing course was over?’
Magnus leafed through the file.
‘Yes. We asked her to stay on for the rest of the summer. We always asked someone to do that; the other tutor and I – he lives in Sydney now, by the way – needed some help with the admin and so on.’
‘How did you decide who got to stay?’ Fredrika asked.
‘It was either decided in advance, or by us once we could see if any of the students were particularly gifted. I mean, they all wanted to stay on; I suppose it was seen as some kind of feather in their cap.’
‘And how did you come to pick Sara Lagerås?’
Magnus consulted his file again.
‘She wrote to us beforehand,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the letter here. Says she wants to work in Umeå for the summer, and she sent in some stuff she’d written, for us to see. She seemed capable, so we gave her a chance.’
‘May I see the letter?’
Magnus passed her the file.
There was nothing interesting in the letter from Sara. It was just a straightforward application for a summer job at the centre.
‘She didn’t mention any other reasons she might have had for wanting to stay?’ asked Fredrika.
‘None that I can recall,’ sighed Magnus.
Seeing Fredrika’s expression, he went on:
‘The thing is, though I do honestly remember this girl, she was only one of the many summer-job students we’ve had here. She lived at the centre and used to hang out with some of the students from previous courses. I can’t remember even talking to her all that often. We definitely didn’t discuss anything personal. We talked work and creative writing.’
Magnus reached for the file, and Fredrika passed it back automatically. She sat in silence as he leafed through it again.
He suddenly straightened up.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said under his breath.
He looked at Fredrika.
‘There was one thing a bit out of the ordinary: a fuss about a particular date.’
Fredrika pulled an enquiring face.
‘The girl, Sara, suddenly told us she absolutely had to have a particular day off, and it happened to be the day we’d planned a seminar that we really needed her to help with. But she wouldn’t budge; claimed she’d given us plenty of notice. My memory was pretty poor even then, so even if she had told us well in advance, I didn’t remember. I was bloody cross with her, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.’
Magnus peered at the contents of the file again.
‘The twenty-ninth of July, it was.’
Fredrika made a careful note.
‘And what was the upshot?’ she asked.
‘She took the day off, of course. She evidently couldn’t reschedule this activity of hers. But it was a bit odd, we all thought so. And the seminar was totally chaotic without her there to help.’
Magnus shook his head.
‘You never asked her where she was that day?’ queried Fredrika.
‘No, she just said she really had to see someone,’ Magnus said. ‘Someone who was only in town that one day. I don’t think she said anything about it to anyone else, either. She was a bit standoffish. I remember I made some note about her being rather antisocial. Her thoughts were always somewhere else.’
Fredrika gave a slow nod.
‘Anything else you can remember?’
Magnus gave a short laugh.
‘I remember I ran into her later on that day, in the evening. She was so white in the face it wasn’t true. Really put the wind up me. But she said she’d be fine if she could go and rest. I assumed it was something to do with whoever she’d been to see, and things not going the way she’d hoped.’
He shrugged.
‘She wasn’t a minor, I couldn’t damn well force her to go to the police or a doctor.’
Fredrika gave a rather stiff smile.
‘No, you’re right,’ she said.
Then she put her card on top of Magnus’s green file.
‘In case you remember anything else,’ she said, and got to her feet.
‘Or feel like a bit of company,’ said Magnus with a wink.
Fredrika managed another stiff smile.
‘I’ll find my own way out,’ she said.
Alex Recht felt miserable. Miserable, and infuriated. In the course of his long police career he had made mistakes, of course he had. No one was perfect. But this. This whole child abduction thing. Sitting there in his office, Alex felt like punching somebody – anybody. He had completely disregarded the possibility of more children being snatched. They all had. Even after the investigation had ruled out Gabriel Sebastiansson as its prime suspect, he had been quite sure that all the events revolved round Sara’s life. Not for one second, until it was too late, had he considered that they might be dealing with evil personified. And by then it was too late – again.
Alex’s chest hurt as he breathed out. His anger was aching somewhere deep down in his throat.
He fiddled with the desk diary in front of him. It was Saturday, and five days since Lilian had been reported missing from an X2000 train from Gothenburg. Five days. That was hardly any time at all. That was what had thrown the police investigation, more than anything else: the speed at which the case had developed. Just as they felt they were in control of the situation, the case was already heading in a different direction entirely. Alex turned over the expression ‘one step behind’ in his mind. He and the team were not one step behind – they were miles behind.
Alex listened to the sounds from the corridor outside. Generally there was hardly anyone there at weekends, but now everything was bustling. The analyst from the National Crime Squad was working himself to death with all the tip-offs coming in on the police hotline. Alex vaguely wondered if there was any point in feeding them all into a database. It hadn’t done them any good at all so far. Admittedly that was to some extent because of the way his team of investigators chose to work. Peder, for example, had not talked to the analyst when the call came through about the woman’s death in Jönköping. If he had, they would have made the link to their own case more quickly. But Fredrika had supplied the necessary information soon enough. That confirmed what Alex had maintained ever since computers started taking over more and more of the paperwork – they had a limited range of applications, because there was always somebody who kept the facts in their own little head. If a team was welded closely enough together, information flowed as it should, even without the help of computers.