‘Fredrika’s going to be a history professor,’ her father said proudly in those early years.
Her mother said nothing; it was her father who had always boasted far and wide of the great success in life he envisaged for his daughter.
But Fredrika did not become a professor. She became a criminologist specializing in crimes against women and children. She never completed her doctorate, and after five years at university she felt she had had more than enough of theoretical study.
She could see in her mother’s eyes that this was unexpected. It had been assumed that she would not want to leave the academic world. Her mother never expressed her disappointment openly, but she admitted she was surprised. Fredrika would dearly have liked to possess more of that quality herself: never to be disappointed, only surprised.
Consequently Fredrika knew a fair bit about pleasure and idleness, about passion and not knowing which way to go in life. As she printed out the accusation of abuse that Sara Sebastiansson had now formally lodged against her ex-husband, she wondered as she so often did why women stay with men who batter them. Was it love and passion? Fear of loneliness and exclusion? But Sara had not stayed. Not really. At least not judging by what Fredrika could deduce from the documents in front of her.
The first formal accusation had been lodged when her daughter was two years old. Sara, unlike many other women, claimed then that her husband had never hit her before. In cases where women themselves came forward to make complaints, there was usually a history. At the time of the first report, Sara had come to her local police station with extensive bruising on her right side and face. Her husband denied all the accusations and said he had an alibi for the evening when Sara claimed to have been attacked. Fredrika frowned. As far as she understood it, Sara never withdrew her accusation as so many women do. But nor did it lead to any kind of prosecution. The evidence did not hold, as three friends of her husband could attest that he had been playing poker until two o’clock on the night in question and had then spent the night at the home of one of them.
Two years then passed before Sara Sebastiansson lodged another complaint. She then claimed that he had not hit her on any occasion in between, but when Fredrika read about the extent of Sara’s injuries and compared them with those she had had the first time, she felt pretty much convinced Sara was lying. She had also been raped. There were no marks at all to be seen on her face.
It seemed unlikely, in Fredrika’s view, for the husband not to have touched his wife for two years, only for the violence then to escalate as it obviously had.
There was no prosecution that time either. Sara’s husband could prove by means of original tickets and the word of two independent witnesses that he had been on business in Malmö at the time of the alleged assault. The crime could not be substantiated, and the investigation was halted.
Fredrika was concerned by what she read, to put it mildly. She could not get the pieces of the picture to fit together. Sara Sebastiansson hadn’t given the impression of being a woman who would lie. Not about anything, in fact. She had not mentioned the assaults, though she must have realized that the police would find out about them sooner or later, but Fredrika was not inclined to see that as a lie. The injuries that had been documented were also true and genuine. So her ex-husband must be guilty, but however did he manage his alibis? He was clearly a successful businessman, and twelve years older than Sara. Did he buy his alibis? But that many?
Fredrika continued working her way through the papers. The couple had separated shortly after the second assault, and only a few weeks after that, Sara was back at the police station lodging another complaint. Her ex-husband would not leave her alone; he stalked her in his car; he waited for her outside her flat and her workplace. Her ex-husband made a counter-accusation that Sara sabotaged all his attempts to maintain proper contact with their daughter. A real classic. A few more months passed – more official complaints to the police of unlawful threat, molestation and trespass – but he never actually hit her. Or if he did, it was not reported.
The last report was dated 11 November 2005, when according to Swedish Telecom’s records Sara’s husband had rung her over a hundred times the same night. That was the only time any accusation made against him could be substantiated, and a banning order was issued to prevent him visiting Sara.
Fredrika pondered this. During Fredrika’s interrogation, Sara had said that she and her ex-husband had recently separated, but the official reports told another story: she and her husband had not lived together since July 2005, when Sara had made the second report of assault to the police. What had happened between 11 November 2005 and today? Fredrika rapidly checked her information against the national police files and sighed when she discovered the answer. They had, of course, got back together again.
The timeline became all too clear. On 17 July 2005, two weeks after the second report to the police, Sara and Gabriel Sebastiansson were at different addresses. They never filed for divorce, but they did separate. On 20 December 2005, just weeks after the banning order was issued, they were back at the same address. Then it all went quiet.
Fredrika wondered what their lives had been like since. She wondered how relations between them were now. And she understood all too well that Sara would not want it to come to her ex-husband’s attention that she had moved on in her life and was in a new relationship.
Fredrika turned to a new page in her notebook. She would have to talk to Sara as soon as possible about the earlier, or continuing, abuse. She would definitely have to talk to Sara’s ex-husband, who was currently unavailable. And she would also have to interview Sara’s new ‘friend’, as she called him. Fredrika slammed her notebook shut and hurried out of her office. There was still time to get a cup of coffee before the team assembled to pool their information about the missing child, Lilian. Maybe she could also fit in a call to Gabriel Sebastiansson’s mother before the meeting. She might know her son’s whereabouts.
Alex Recht opened the meeting in the Den with his usual efficiency. Peder always felt a slight quickening of his pulse when they were gathered there on operational business. The Den, or the Lions’ Den to give it its full name, was what they called the only meeting room they had. Peder liked the name. He took it for granted that it hadn’t been Fredrika’s suggestion. She was entirely lacking in that sort of imagination and finesse.
It was nearly six and Lilian Sebastiansson had been missing for more than four hours. In view of the fact that she had disappeared in the middle of Stockholm, and in view of her age, this had to be considered a long time. It was clearly beyond all reasonable doubt that she had not gone missing of her own free will. She was far too young to have made her way anywhere unaided, and she had no shoes on her feet.
‘I need hardly remind you that we have a very grave situation here,’ said Alex grimly, surveying his colleagues.
Nobody said a word, and Alex took a seat at the table.
Besides Alex, those in attendance were Fredrika, Peder, and the team’s assistant Ellen Lind. Also present were some officers from the uniformed branch, there to report on the search of the area round the Central Station, and a few people from the technical division.
Alex started by asking what the search had revealed. The answer was as short as it was depressing: it had revealed nothing at all. Hardly anyone had responded to the appeal over the public-address system on the concourse, and talking to the taxi firms had not produced any leads either.
The result of the technical check of the train coaches was almost as scanty. It had been hard to secure any fingerprints on site, nor had they found any traces indicating where the girl had got off the train. If it was assumed that she was carried and was possibly still asleep when she was taken, the task became even more difficult. No traces of blood had been found anywhere. All that they had found, and been able to secure, were some shoeprints on the floor, right by the girl’s seat.
Alex pricked up his ears when he heard that the train crew said the floor
s were cleaned between trips, which meant the prints the technicians had found must relate to the journey in question. The prints were from a pair of Ecco shoes, size 46.
‘All right,’ Alex said briskly. ‘We’ll have to see if we get any pointers from the other passengers on the train.’
He cleared his throat.
‘Has the news gone out to the media yet, by the way? I haven’t seen or heard anything.’
The question was really directed at Ellen, who was the nearest thing the team had to a press officer. She answered:
‘It was on the radio quite quickly, as we requested, and on the web, of course. And an announcement went out through the Central News Agency about an hour ago. We can expect the story to be in all the big national dailies tomorrow. The statement we issued to the media says specifically that we want to hear from all the passengers on that train from Gothenburg as soon as possible.’
Alex nodded, feeling fairly satisfied. He had no objections himself to turning to the media for help. But he was well aware that putting out the appeal could prove counterproductive. It was the end of July, the summer was raining away, millions of Swedes were off work for the holidays, and the newspaper editorial offices were presumably suffering from a total dearth of news. He scarcely dared think what the following day’s headlines would be if the girl was not found in the course of the evening. And he scarcely dared contemplate how many members of the public would pick up the phone and ring in with a tip-off. Far too many people had a tendency to imagine that they were in possession of some vital piece of information the police couldn’t live without.
‘We’ll hold back on the press conference for now,’ he said meditatively. ‘And we’ll wait a bit before we issue a picture of the girl.’ He went on, now addressing the whole investigation team: ‘As we know, we’re only talking about a very short space of time when there was no adult with her. According to the statements we’ve taken, she was left unsupervised for fewer than four minutes. The train had been at a standstill for scarcely a minute when the conductor got back to her seat, and by then she was gone.’
Alex turned to Peder.
‘Peder, did you get anything concrete from your interviews? What sense did you get of the people you spoke to?’
Peder sighed and flicked through his notebook.
‘I didn’t talk to anyone who was directly under suspicion, so to speak,’ he drawled. ‘Nobody saw anything; nobody heard anything. The girl was gone, that’s all. The only one who behaved a bit weirdly was the other conductor, Arvid Melin. He not only gave the all-clear for the train to leave Flemingsberg without Sara Sebastiansson, he also ignored his colleague’s call for assistance. But to be honest . . . No, I can’t for the life of me say I really think Arvid M. had anything to do with it. He seems totally useless at his job, and that no doubt made it easier for whoever took Lilian, but he wasn’t actively involved in her disappearance. I really don’t think so. And he hasn’t got a criminal record.’
‘Good,’ said Alex.
Fredrika frowned.
‘I’m not sure I think Arvid Melin stands out as the shady one in all this,’ she said. ‘Can we assume it was a coincidence that Sara missed the train in Flemingsberg? What have we got on the woman who delayed her there?’
Alex put his head on one side.
‘What’s your take on it?’ he asked.
‘It depends how we view the girl’s disappearance. If we think it was planned, and depended on the girl being unsupervised in Stockholm so she’d be easier to snatch, we have to see the woman with the dog as a suspect, too,’ Fredrika replied.
‘True,’ said Alex with some hesitation. ‘But then how did the perpetrator know that the adult who was supposed to keep watch on Lilian would be prevented from doing so?’
‘He didn’t, of course,’ said Fredrika. ‘The perpetrator must naturally have realized that Sara Sebastiansson would leap into action when she missed the train, and contact the crew. But maybe it still seemed less of a problem to take her from someone who didn’t know her than from her mother. Whoever took Lilian might have tried to do it even if Henry Lindgren had been there.’
‘So you think the priority was to get Sara off the train, so what happened in Flemingsberg was no coincidence?’ asked Alex.
‘Exactly,’ said Fredrika.
‘Hmm,’ said Alex.
‘Er,’ said Peder.
Alex gave Peder an encouraging nod.
‘Well, I think it seems a bit far-fetched,’ said Peder with a doubtful expression.
‘What’s the alternative?’ asked Fredrika. ‘It was all pure chance?’
‘Opportunity makes a thief,’ said Peder, like a patient teacher.
Fredrika could not believe what she was hearing, and was about to argue when Alex broke in.
‘Let’s finish the run-through of our findings first, then we can continue this discussion,’ he suggested.
He nodded to Peder to go on.
Peder waited demonstratively for a few seconds for Fredrika to start protesting, but to his disappointment, she did not. Ellen’s mobile stated to ring, however, so she left the room. Referring to his rather sloppy notes, Peder passed on to his colleagues what little other information they had. Nobody had seen what happened in Flemingsberg and nobody had seen Lilian leaving the train.
‘The interviews didn’t produce much,’ said Peder, feeling suddenly sheepish.
Alex shook his head as if to say it didn’t matter.
‘At this juncture, it’s impossible to say what’s important and what’s not,’ he sighed. ‘Fredrika, can you give us Sara’s story and what you’ve got on her ex-husband, please?’
Fredrika liked giving lectures. She spoke clearly and concretely, and in all the other places she had worked, her presentations had been praised. But she suspected that in the police she was considered supercilious and far too formal.
Fredrika briefly gave her own impression of Sara and her account of the events in Flemingsberg. She also explained what the files had turned up, and put forward her theory that Sara’s husband was still a big problem for her.
It was Alex who spoke next, of course.
‘Have you talked to her ex-husband?’ he asked.
‘His name’s Gabriel, and technically they’re still married, so he’s not really her “ex-husband” but her husband,’ Fredrika began. ‘And no, I haven’t managed to get hold of him. He’s got a small house tucked away in a nice part of Östermalm. I got through to his mother just before the start of the meeting, and she said her son was on a business trip. She thought he’d be in Uppsala all day. I tried ringing, but his phone’s turned off. He had to be informed of what’s happened to his daughter, anyway, so I left a voicemail message.’
‘What’s his current situation? Does he live alone?’ asked Alex, jotting something down on his pad.
‘I haven’t had a chance to ask Sara or his mother yet. But I shall look into it, of course.’
Alex pondered in silence. A father who had in all probability abused his ex-wife on numerous occasions, and was perhaps still doing so, was a very interesting person in a missing child investigation. The single most interesting person, in fact. Decades of police work supported that fundamental assumption.
‘What were the custody arrangements?’ he asked Fredrika, leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head.
‘What Sara herself told me was that it hadn’t been a matter of dispute between them, but on the phone just now, the husband’s mother expressed concern that her son didn’t get to see Lilian more often. I got the impression that she, the grandmother, was well informed about her son’s daily life. She told me, for example, that the time he rang Sara a hundred times on one evening he was, as the grandmother put it, “beside himself with worry for the girl”. She claimed Sara had taken Lilian off on a short trip without telling Gabriel.’
‘So they had argued about the girl, in fact, at least earlier on,’ Alex said slowly. ‘Are there any grounds at all for suspect
ing that Sara Sebastiansson has been lying, and never was abused and harassed by her husband?’
Fredrika gave an emphatic shake of the head.
‘No,’ she said, with some force. ‘I simply don’t see how that could be possible. Not when the injuries are so well documented.’
‘But isn’t there something fishy about this whole set-up?’ asked Peder, glancing at Alex, who nodded.
‘Yes, there’s something fishy all right. But I can’t quite put my finger on it.’
He looked at Fredrika.
‘Have you spoken to Sara Sebastiansson about the abuse aspect?’
‘No, I didn’t see the reports until I got back here. But I’m going to see her later this evening and I’ll bring it up then.’
A rattling sound filled the silence when Fredrika stopped talking. The ancient air conditioning made a lot of noise considering how little cool air it generated.
‘But even so,’ Peder persisted, with another look of entreaty at Alex. ‘The father’s got to be our hottest lead, if he really is such a bastard as Sara claims, that is.’
Alex saw Fredrika’s face harden at Peder’s insinuation that Sara Sebastiansson might be lying to the police.
‘Definitely,’ he said. ‘Regardless of what Sara herself may think, the father is a main lead in this investigation until we have reason to write him off as uninteresting.’
Fredrika felt relieved, and her shoulders relaxed a little. Alex had often thought how attractive she could be when she smiled and relaxed. Shame she didn’t do it more often, that was all.
‘Right,’ said Alex. ‘You said the girl’s mother had a new man. Is he of any interest?’
‘I haven’t got a definite ID on him yet. He’s called Anders Nyström, and Sara’s known him for such a short time that all she could give me was his year of birth and where he lives. He isn’t recorded as living at the address where Sara went to see him, and his mobile number only traces back to an unregistered pay-as-you-go account. He isn’t answering his mobile and the voicemail isn’t working.’
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