Alex summed up the case and their findings with exemplary brevity. He avoided looking at their foreign guest. He took it for granted that the FBI must be a lot more fun than working for the Stockholm police.
As if he could read Alex’s thoughts, the Professor suddenly spoke up.
‘I have to say, this is an extremely interesting case,’ he said.
‘Really,’ queried Alex, feeling perversely flattered.
‘Yes,’ said Rowland. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t quite see from your diagram exactly what help you need from me right now. What is it that’s not clear?’
Alex stared at his own sketch. Surely there was plenty that wasn’t clear?
‘It’s quite clear – beyond all reasonable doubt – that the same man kidnapped and murdered both girls,’ the Professor began. ‘But if the woman you’ve identified at the hospital really is the man’s accomplice, and I think we can assume that on the basis of your interview, then he must have carried the second crime through on his own, without her. The question is: did something go wrong in the first murder? Serial killers very rarely start their careers with two such major crimes in the course of just a few days, crimes that would attract such attention.’
The Professor paused, as though to check everyone understood what he said, and that he was not speaking out of turn.
Alex put his head on one side.
‘So what you mean, Professor Rowland, is that you think the fact that the woman was able to get out of the flat on her own after the attack, and went to hospital, made him act more quickly?’
‘I’m convinced of it,’ the Professor said firmly. ‘The woman was probably punished for not completing some part of her task to the letter during the first murder. The nature of her injuries seems to indicate that he was in a rage when he attacked her, wild and out of control. That in turn shows that she must have been careless about something she didn’t understand to be of crucial importance to the killer at a symbolic level.’
Alex sat down, leaving the stage to the Professor for a while.
‘We must have our picture of this couple clear in our minds,’ Rowland said emphatically. ‘Both the women the man tried to collaborate with were weak individuals in the sense that they had been in very vulnerable positions and had a hard time, even though they were young. They were probably attracted to the man because no one like him had ever shown any interest in them before.’
Fredrika’s mind went back to what Nora’s grandmother Margareta had said: that it had seemed like a real life Cinderella story when Nora met the man who was later to destroy her life.
‘You are almost certainly looking for a very charismatic, determined person,’ the Professor continued. ‘He may have a military background, but whatever his exact background, he’s well-educated. He’s good-looking. That’s how he attracts these abandoned girls and gets them to worship him to the point where they’ll do anything for him. If he is a psychologist, as both girls claim he told them, that scarcely makes him less of a threat to us.’
‘But the first woman walked out on him,’ Fredrika objected, thinking again of Nora in Jönköping.
Who had had the strength to break free and make a new start.
‘True,’ said the Professor, ‘but then she wasn’t entirely alone. She had a strong grandmother behind her. Our killer would certainly have learnt from that mistake the first time – if it was the first time. The woman he seeks has to be weak, and entirely on her own. There mustn’t be anyone in her life with any influence over her. He alone must be able to dominate her and dictate the terms of how she lives.’
Professor Rowland shifted his position on the hard chair. It was apparent that he liked talking, and would carry on as long as no one interrupted him.
‘He thought he had complete control over this last woman, Jelena, yet even she sprang a surprise and left him. His woman is important to him, practically but also mentally. She affirms him; she intensifies his perception of himself as a genius. And…’
Professor Rowland looked serious, and held up a warning finger.
‘And, my friends, he is a genius. Neither of the women knows what his name is, where he works, or even what type of car he has. They never call him anything but “The Man”. He could be absolutely anywhere. The best you can hope for is that you pick up his fingerprints in the woman’s flat, but I rather doubt you will. Bearing in mind how strategically this man seems to operate, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s disfigured his own fingers.’
There was a spontaneous murmur from his audience, and Alex impatiently hushed them.
‘What do you mean, disfigured?’
‘Oh, it’s not difficult,’ Professor Rowland smiled. ‘Nor even particularly uncommon. A lot of asylum seekers do it, to make it hard to register their fingerprints. Then they can seek asylum in a series of other countries if their application is turned down in the first one they go to.’
There was not a sound in the Den. Alex had been pinning his hopes on fingerprints or DNA from the flat providing the solution to the case, always assuming the man had a previous conviction. He straightened his back.
‘Wait a minute, you mean you think the man has been convicted before?’
‘If he hasn’t, then there’s more likelihood of your finding his fingerprints in the flat,’ said Professor Rowland. ‘If he has, and I believe that to be the case, then I would be very surprised if he’d been careless enough to leave any concrete traces behind him.’
Fredrika considered what the Professor had said about the perpetrator seeming to speed up the pace once the woman escaped from the flat.
‘Can we infer that more children will go missing?’ she asked, frowning.
‘We certainly can,’ replied Professor Rowland. ‘I think we can more or less assume he has a list of kids he’s planning to abduct. It’s not something he decides as he goes along – he already has this all worked out.’
‘But how does he find them?’ blurted Peder in frustration. ‘How does he choose the children?’
‘It’s not the children he finds,’ said the Professor. ‘It’s their mothers. It’s the mothers being punished; the children are just a means to an end. He’s taking revenge on someone else’s behalf. He’s putting things to rights.’
‘But that still doesn’t answer my question,’ Peder said in desperation. ‘And what’s driving him?’
‘No,’ the Professor agreed, ‘not exactly. But almost. Both women have been punished in the same way: he stole and killed their children and dumped them in a place to which they had some link. So one possible conclusion is that both women had committed the same crime. And that the answer to what’s driving him is vengeance.’
Professor Rowland adjusted his glasses and scrutinized Alex’s diagram.
‘He is punishing the women for not loving all children equally. He is punishing them because if you don’t love all children, you are not to have any at all.’
He furrowed his brow.
‘It’s hard to know exactly what he means,’ he sighed. ‘It seems as if these women, wholly or partially unconsciously, have wronged their own children, or some other child. Again, I don’t think the women themselves necessarily remember the precise occasion. They almost certainly haven’t broken any law. But he thinks they have.’
‘And so does the woman in the hospital,’ Fredrika put in.
The others looked at her and nodded their agreement.
The Professor made an expansive gesture.
‘The word he uses to mark the children, “Unwanted”, identifies the subject for us with absolute clarity, especially now we know the backgrounds of his two female companions, but we still don’t know exactly what the trigger is, so we do not know either exactly how he once encountered these women who have lost their children. But we know, we know, that he must be aware of their pasts, since both bodies were dumped in a town or a place the women have had no contact with for many years.’