So I ought to go home. Right now. And stare at him until my eyes fall out.
She looked at a photograph of Malcolm Benke, dead in his armchair with a bullet through his chest. Was it a betrayal if she changed her mind? Was she betraying Malcolm by going home to wait for someone else’s death rather than pursuing the truth about his? Hardly. Alex would be fine without her.
I’ll discuss it with Spencer tonight. Then I’ll tell Alex.
But first of all she must contact Mikael Lundell in Israel. Alex had asked her to do it; he was clearly disturbed by the phone call he’d taken just before the meeting with Linda Sullivan. Fredrika took several deep breaths before she was able to make herself pick up the phone and key in the number. She and Eden had neither seen each other nor spoken since those terrible events. There had been no reason to do so. She suddenly felt nervous. What was she going to say when either Eden or Mikael answered? Should she offer her condolences? They’d been grieving for almost four years now.
A click on the other end of the line.
‘Eden Lundell.’
Fredrika couldn’t get a single word out. Eden’s voice brought back countless emotions. Eden, who had rushed up the stairs and into her apartment to find that both her children had been shot.
‘Hello?’
Fredrika cleared her throat. ‘Sorry, I am here – it’s Fredrika Bergman. I don’t know if you remember me?’
‘Of course I do.’
Eden’s voice was just the same as before, deep and hoarse.
‘I’m calling on Alex’s behalf. He . . . Something came up.’
Death. What else?
‘Okay.’
‘I’d like to speak to Mikael, if that’s possible? Or shall I call back later?’
Eden’s reply was brusque. ‘We agreed on five o’clock Swedish time and it’s five o’clock now, so I don’t see a problem.’
Fredrika was so taken aback by Eden’s attitude that she didn’t say a word.
‘Mikael will be here in a second.’
With that Eden was gone. No exchange of pleasantries, and Fredrika hadn’t even attempted to ask how the family were getting on. It wasn’t a lack of politeness, she realised; she wanted to spare Eden the pain of answering that question.
Even as a child Fredrika had understood that an astonishing number of couples consisted of two people who were nothing like each other. Opposites attract, as they say. In Eden and Mikael’s case this was particularly striking.
After Eden’s harshness came Mikael’s gentleness.
Fredrika asked him how he knew Malcolm Benke. ‘They called me one Sunday,’ he explained. ‘Sorry, not they – he. Malcolm rang me one Sunday, said that he and his family needed my help. His daughter had told him that she’d turned to me for support on several occasions.’
Mikael’s accent was difficult to place, but it was obvious that he’d moved around a lot, spent time in different parts of Sweden and the rest of the world. Fredrika let out a long breath when he began to speak. He wasn’t being in any way obstructive.
‘And why did Beata need your support?’
‘Because she had problems with her husband.’
Was he allowed to tell her this? The question came into Fredrika’s mind out of nowhere. Mikael was a priest; wasn’t he obliged to respect the seal of the confessional, so to speak? She decided to let him take the lead; if Mikael didn’t object, she would carry on. Always better to apologise than ask for permission.
As if he’d read her mind, Mikael said:
‘The police didn’t contact me after Beata’s death, and I didn’t seek them out. I read about the case in the papers, of course, kept myself informed as best I could.’
He paused, as if he’d run out of words and was wondering how to continue.
‘You regret that,’ Fredrika said. ‘Although I can’t see you did anything wrong.’
She could hear Mikael breathing heavily. ‘That’s only because you don’t know what I knew.’
It was Fredrika’s turn to fall silent.
‘As I said, Beata had told Malcolm that I’d supported her, so one day he contacted me. On a Sunday, just after the morning service. He asked to see me, and I invited him round that same afternoon. I . . .’
A child shouted in the background, and the conversation was interrupted as Mikael put down the phone and disappeared. He soon came back.
‘Sorry about that – my youngest daughter wanted help with something.’
Tears sprang to Fredrika’s eyes. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Sorry?’
Fredrika clarified: ‘I didn’t know you’d had another child.’
Mikael let out a brief laugh. ‘It was a few years ago, but thank you.’
Fredrika smiled, then returned to the matter in hand. ‘So you met Malcolm Benke.’
‘Yes – and his son.’
‘His son?’
‘Bernhard – he was a year or so younger than Beata. A real hothead, if I can put it that way. He was obviously furious with his parents.’
‘Why?’
‘He accused both of them, but mainly his father, of doing far too little for Beata. He feared for his sister’s life, and of course he was proved right in the end.’
‘What on earth did he expect his parents to do?’
Mikael didn’t answer straight away, and Fredrika could feel his uncertainty.
‘I think he wanted them to do anything, literally anything, for her.’
‘I understand,’ Fredrika said quietly.
‘Of course it’s possible that I was mistaken, but I don’t think so. Bernhard was seething over his parents’ weakness.’
‘So why didn’t he do something?’
‘Quite. Maybe he thought they had less to lose by crossing the line, so to speak, and engaging in criminal activities in order to get Beata out of there.’
‘And all this was played out in front of you?’
‘It was. When their discussion spilled over into a stand-up row, I realised why Malcolm had contacted me. He wanted me to mediate between him and his son, but it was incredibly difficult. I had very little advice to offer, but I did tell them not to do anything stupid that they might regret.’
Fredrika continued to make notes; the conversation with Bernhard Benke was going to have a very different focus now.
Were you planning to murder your brother-in-law, Bernhard?
And did you murder your father because he failed to save your sister?
‘How did your meeting end?’ she asked.
‘They left without my having managed to broker any kind of peace between them,’ Mikael replied, sounding downcast. ‘I didn’t hear from them again until Malcolm turned up with his friends.’
Fredrika stiffened. ‘What friends?’ She opened her folder and took out a copy of the photo they’d found in Malcolm’s house. The one that had been taken in Beata’s living room at a time no one was prepared to remember.
‘Two childhood friends – Eskil and Sten.’
Bingo.
She allowed Mikael to continue.
‘They arrived in London ready for a fight, intending to confront Beata’s husband mob-handed and, as they put it, scare the shit out of him. They were also going to offer him a large sum of money to disappear from Beata’s life. They wanted me there as a witness to prevent him from claiming they’d beaten him up or something.’
‘The mention of scaring the shit out of him sounds as if they weren’t afraid to cross a line,’ Fredrika said. She stared at the photograph. Mikael was clearly uncomfortable, refusing to look at the camera.
‘I thought back to my previous meeting with Malcolm,’ he said. ‘I was afraid Bernhard had been working on him, persuaded him to do something stupid. And his friends didn’t fill me with confidence; they didn’t seem stable, they were much too emotional.’
‘So you went along to make sure the encounter didn’t end in disaster?’
‘That was the general idea, but it was all a lot less dramatic tha
n I’d feared. Beata’s husband broke down completely as the three of them yelled at him. Eventually everyone calmed down, and we managed to discuss things on a more constructive level. I don’t think I saw anything that could be described as criminal behaviour.’
You don’t think?
‘No threats were issued?’ Fredrika asked.
‘Not as far as I can recall. Well, no direct threats. No death threats anyway.’
Fredrika didn’t press him to be more precise.
‘Were any pictures taken on that occasion?’
‘Yes – I thought that was very strange. Malcolm asked Richard to photograph us before we left.’
Fredrika wondered if she’d misheard.
‘He asked his son-in-law to take the picture?’
She’d assumed Beata had been behind the camera.
‘That’s right.’
‘Beata wasn’t home?’
‘No – God, no.’
The priest was blaspheming, which pleased Fredrika no end.
‘Sten Aber claimed that he didn’t recognise the photo,’ she said. ‘He even pretended not to recognise you. Can you think of any reason why he would do that?’
It was a shot in the dark; Mikael Lundell wasn’t responsible for Sten’s silence.
‘I can imagine that Sten would have been very stressed after the event,’ Mikael said. ‘He wasn’t the most driven of the three men; he might even have got it into his head that he was somehow to blame for Beata’s death.’
So Sten Aber had lied to protect himself.
Not unusual, but it didn’t exactly make him a model citizen.
‘So what was your assessment of the situation when you left? Did you think you’d managed to improve things for Beata?’
‘I’m embarrassed to answer that question,’ Mikael said, ‘but yes, I thought everything would be fine. It wasn’t, of course. As I found out almost straight away.’
Fredrika was still looking at the picture.
‘When did this meeting take place?’
Mikael’s voice suddenly sounded thin.
‘Two days before she died.’
Alex Recht was sitting with the phone in his hand, hesitating. He ought to call Noah Johansson back; he was curious to find out what the funeral director wanted. But first he had to staunch the flow of memories. Didn’t Johansson realise what he’d stirred up?
No ordeal had been worse than watching Lena die. Nothing had torn at his heart more, weighed him down more. To experience such a loss was to become privy to a secret no normal human being wanted to get anywhere near. He had been so angry back then; sometimes he was still so angry now.
‘Why didn’t anyone say anything?’ he’d shouted during a phone call to his son one evening when things were at rock bottom. ‘Why the fuck didn’t anyone tell me?’
His voice had been thick with tears, his whole body full to bursting with fear.
‘Tell you what, Dad? I don’t understand.’
And Alex had whispered:
‘Why didn’t anyone tell me this could actually happen?’
Because that was how it felt, as if the truth had been kept from him. People could die long before they achieved the eighty years or so they’d been promised, and he was not exempt from the effects of this terrible tragedy. Dying before you got old was unnatural. That was the only conclusion he’d managed to reach – or at least the fact that it had happened to someone close to Alex was unnatural. Shit happened to other people – and as part of his job, never in his private life.
He didn’t remember how his son had answered his desperate question – with some pathetic platitude, no doubt. Nobody had known what to say when Lena died. Even Margareta Berlin, head of Human Resources back then, had come out with some meaningless nonsense, then gone behind his back and asked Fredrika to keep an eye on him. Unforgivable.
There’s something damaged about that woman, he thought. And it can’t be fixed.
He pulled himself together and made the call.
‘Noah Johansson.’
‘Alex Recht. Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you.’
It was gone six; the hours had just slipped by.
Noah sounded eager (much too eager) and relieved:
‘No problem, it’s fine, absolutely fine. The important thing is that you’ve called. I can’t thank . . . I was so afraid that . . . I didn’t even know if . . .’
The forced jollity and the series of unfinished sentences worried Alex. What did Noah want? He’d mentioned a missing brother.
He coughed; the air in HQ was so dry. ‘You said you wanted my help; could you be a little more specific?’ He hoped this would encourage Noah to get a grip.
Which it did.
‘Of course, of course. I don’t quite know where to start. It’s been several months . . . As I said, my brother’s disappeared.’
Alex shook his head slowly. ‘I’m very sorry, but as I explained before, you need to report him missing so that someone with more time than me can take a closer look at the situation.’
Noah’s protest was immediate.
‘I’ve already done all that. I called the police as soon as I realised something was wrong.’
Then he told the story again, this time in considerably more detail.
‘It was a few weeks after I got back from a trip abroad. My first for several years – it’s difficult for me to take time off. Anyway, that’s just background really. The fact that I’d been away for a while. I went over to my brother’s house, and I knew straight away that something wasn’t right. The place was kind of untidy – as if the family was at home. A bike lying on the drive, a window left ajar. You don’t leave a house like that if you’re going to be away for a year.’
Too many words, too much stress in his voice. Alex was in the middle of another case; he didn’t have time to wonder what had become of Noah’s brother. As if from a distance he heard Noah talking much too fast about the many failings of the police, and about one officer in particular who couldn’t even work out what time it was in Sydney. He also mentioned hidden messages from his brother in the form of a house key and a swear word.
‘You need to calm down,’ Alex said eventually. ‘You say your brother’s missing, that the house was a mess. The family were planning an extended trip to Australia, but you don’t think that’s where they’ve gone. So were they leaving their house empty?’
Noah’s voice almost broke.
‘As I understood it, yes. They did consider renting it out but Malin, my sister-in-law, didn’t like the idea.’
‘So maybe they left it in a bit of a state to give the impression that they wouldn’t be gone for too long? To keep the burglars away?’ Alex suggested.
‘No. I see your point, but this is different.’
‘And the police believe they left of their own free will?’ Alex said quietly. It was very clear that he should never have made this call.
‘Exactly, and they’re wrong. Totally fucking wrong. Excuse my language, but I don’t understand how the police can get away with this. The summer will soon be over, and it’s clear to me that someone is guilty of gross negligence at the very least. What if Dan and his family are dead?’
Noah began to cry, and Alex wanted more than anything to put down the phone. And yet . . . He remembered the funeral director as a composed and competent person. A man in control of himself and life. There was no doubt that something had changed since then – but what? And why was it Alex’s job to look into whatever it might be?
It’s not my job. It’s not my job.
‘The officers you’ve been dealing with must have explained why they think your brother has chosen to stay away,’ he said in a kinder tone.
‘They believe all that nonsense about Australia, because they’ve sent messages to Dan’s email address and received replies saying everything’s fine.’
‘Sorry if I sound confused, but are you telling me the police have been in contact with your brother?’ Alex said.
‘No, that’s my point! Dan didn’t write those messages, someone else is using his email account. The fact that I even need to point out something so obvious is just crazy. I know my own brother. He’s not in Australia. Or maybe he is, but there’s still something very wrong about the whole situation.’
Alex scratched his head, trying to work out what Noah was telling him and what he wasn’t telling him.
‘If the problem is in Australia rather than in Sweden, then you ought to contact the police over there,’ he said. ‘But you need to be sure they are there and not somewhere else.’
Alex allowed his thoughts free rein for a moment. There was clearly a problem, but did that problem lie with Noah, or were his claims about the family’s disappearance true? Alex didn’t really know the man, didn’t know anything about his physical or mental health. People imagined things, especially those who had too much time and too little going on in their lives. Noah was a single man in his forties who ran a funeral business. Alex was wary of reading too much into that, but he wondered what Noah’s relationship with his brother was like. Was Dan the most important person in Noah’s life? If so, it was hardly surprising that he would be upset by the family’s decision to move to the other side of the world, and had come up with a different explanation for their disappearance from Stockholm.
Disappearance.
That word made everything so difficult. According to Noah, an entire family had been abducted and were being held captive. Unless of course they were dead. Did that kind of stuff really happen? It was a question that had become less and less relevant over the years as far as Alex was concerned. Everything happened, and rather too often. But an entire family?
‘I’m not the only one who thinks it’s weird,’ Noah said. ‘One of my sister-in-law’s friends came to see me – she’s really worried too. Her name is Tina, Tina Antonsson.’
Alex jotted down the name and thought it was probably the least important note he’d ever made. He’d already come to a decision. When he had time – and not before – he would contact the officer Noah had been dealing with, find out what had been done and what he or she thought.
‘Tell me this – off the top of your head, why would someone do this to your brother and his family? It sounds so deliberate, so strange. Abducting a whole family is an extremely risky undertaking. Why would someone go to such lengths to harm Dan?’
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