‘Of course,’ Fredrika hastened to say.
‘But given the nature of the crime and the fact that your enquiry is no more specific than it is, I see no problem in answering your question,’ Sonja Lundin announced briskly.
Fredrika held her breath.
‘There is a file in the name of the person you enquired about,’ Sonja Lundin informed her.
Fredrika blinked. There, she’d thought so.
‘Can you give me a date?’ she said quietly, afraid of overstepping the mark and demanding too much information.
Sonja Lundin was silent for a moment.
‘29 July 1989,’ she then said. ‘The patient was discharged the same day. But I’m afraid I can’t tell you what she was here for unless…’
Fredrika interrupted her.
‘That’s all I need to know for the moment. Thanks very much indeed for your help.’
Evening was drawing in. The sky had an almost autumnal look as the evening sun went behind a cloud. What had happened to summer this year? Alex let his eyes rest on the view from his window. It felt like a different sort of evening. An exciting one.
Alex’s reflective mood was punctured by Peder, who came galloping into the room. Alex smiled. Whereas Fredrika was forever slipping out on secret little missions and dramatically revealing her findings at group meetings, Peder liked to report back frequently on his achievements and conclusions.
‘They’ve known each other since New Year,’ he announced, sinking uninvited into the armchair Alex kept for visitors.
‘Who?’
‘Jelena and the so-called Man.’
‘And how do you know that?’
Peder drew himself up.
‘I told you I was going out to Karolinska,’ he replied, with a slightly defiant air.
When Alex said nothing, Peder went on.
‘He picked her up off the street; she was a prostitute.’
Alex sighed, and propped his chin in one hand.
‘Wasn’t the other girl, as well? The Jönköping murder?’ asked Peder.
Alex’s brow furrowed.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said uncertainly. ‘You’ll have to check with Fredrika, but I don’t think so. She was in with that sort of crowd, though, so she might very well have met him on the street, come to think of it.’
Peder made an impatient gesture.
‘Oh come on,’ he said. ‘What would she be doing on the street if she wasn’t a prostitute?’
‘How the fuck do I know?’ Alex said tetchily. ‘It’s what her grandmother said. And if Grandma wants to varnish the truth a bit, that’s up to Grandma. But she might also be right. Nora isn’t on our files in connection with any prostitution rackets.’
‘But how does she fit into all this?’ asked Peder. ‘I just don’t get why he bothers at that critical stage to shoot over to Jönköping and bump off an ex-girlfriend.’
‘An ex-girlfriend he long since let in on all his plans,’ Alex reminded him.
‘Sure,’ said Peder. ‘Sure. But still… What the hell was the point?’
‘I’m with you on that, but I say we leave it aside for now,’ Alex said doggedly. ‘I’ve spoken to the Jönköping police. They didn’t manage to secure a single clue to the identity of the killer except that Ecco shoeprint. The Jönköping line of enquiry isn’t going to get us anywhere.’
‘But we suspected for a while that he had some way of knowing what stage we’d reached in the investigation,’ began Peder.
‘That must have been a coincidence,’ Alex broke in. ‘At that point we scarcely knew ourselves that she’d rung in and tipped us off about him.’
Peder shut his mouth. Then he said:
‘The reason they can’t find anything is that he’s sabotaged his own fingers.’
Alex stared at him.
‘Are you joking?’
Peder shook his head.
‘Christ almighty,’ groaned Alex. ‘What kind of pervert are we dealing with here?’
Peder was quick to supply the information.
‘Could he be a kerb-crawler?’
Alex was brought up short.
‘Kerb-crawler?’
‘That’s how he finds his girls.’
Alex put his head on one side.
‘That’s not a bad idea,’ he said slowly. ‘Not a bad idea at all. And there are kerb-crawlers from all social classes, as we know.’
‘Right, I’ll start looking there, then,’ Peder declared.
‘You do that,’ Alex said with equal determination, adding: ‘And check out particularly anybody who’s been had up for gross violation of a woman’s integrity, or any other crimes of violence directed at women. This might not be the first time he’s assaulted a woman.’
Peder gave a keen nod.
Then they both just sat there, trying to summon the energy to stand up and get to grips with everything that needed to be done.
‘She said he calls her “Doll”,’ said Peder, breaking the silence.
‘Doll?’ echoed Alex.
Any bereavement is hard to bear.
But the grief of losing a child is not just heavy: it is as dark as night.
Fredrika tried to hold that thought in her mind as she got out of the car outside Sara Sebastiansson’s flat. Once she had had the phone call from Umeå, there was no reason to delay, so she had come straight round. She wondered if she was overstepping the mark by coming to see her on a Saturday evening, and found the answer to be an emphatic no. No, given the circumstances it wasn’t wrong. Not in the slightest.
Fredrika tried to keep her anger in check. She tried to understand, and above all she tried to convince herself there was a reason why Sara had behaved as she had done.
But she could feel the frustration pounding away inside her. A piece of the puzzle had been missing all this time, and Sara had been coolly sitting there with it in her hand. She had not just obstructed the investigation of her own daughter’s death; she had also obstructed progress in the baby Natalie case.
Fredrika wished instinctively and with all her heart that Sara would be alone in the flat when she rang the doorbell. Otherwise she would have to ask the parents to leave.
Sara opened the door at Fredrika’s second ring. She looked pale and haggard, with such dark rings under her bloodshot eyes that all Fredrika’s anger and frustration melted away. Reality landed right in front of her: this was a woman who had just experienced her worst nightmare in real life. Criticism had very little place here.
‘I’m sorry to turn up unannounced,’ Fredrika said in a low but steady voice, ‘but I need to talk to you.’
Sara stepped back from the door to let Fredrika in, and showed her through to the living room. It seemed to be serving as an extra bedroom; there were mattresses on the floor. Presumably her parents hadn’t gone home yet, though to Fredrika’s relief they weren’t anywhere to be seen.
‘Are you on your own?’ asked Fredrika.
Sara nodded.
‘Mum and Dad are out doing some food shopping,’ she said in a thin voice. ‘They’ll be back soon.’
Fredrika unobtrusively took out her notepad.
‘Have you found him?’ The words burst out of Sara.
‘You mean…’ Fredrika began, rather confused.
‘I mean Gabriel,’ replied Sara, and when Fredrika met her gaze she felt cold all over.
Sara’s eyes were blazing with pure, unadulterated hatred.
‘No,’ said Fredrika, ‘we haven’t found him. But we’ve issued a nationwide alert and arrested him in his absence.’
She swallowed and paused.
‘But we no longer suspect him of Lilian’s abduction and murder. In purely practical terms, he can’t possibly have done it.’
Sara gave Fredrika a long look.
‘I don’t think he murdered our daughter either,’ she said. ‘But now I know he had his computer full of disgusting child porn, I can’t wait for you to find him and lock him up for all the time he’s damn well got left to him.’
Fredrika did not even consider getting into a discussion of the sort of sentence that might be waiting for Gabriel Sebastiansson when they found him, if they ever did. She kept it all inside her, and tried to say something comforting instead: