Ellen was no flirt. She was actually rather shy, and not used to being paid compliments. It wasn’t that she was ugly or anything, absolutely not, but she did tend to create a rather ‘ordinary’ impression. Neither too much colour, nor too little. Not a fabulous wardrobe, but not a dull one, either. It was easy to make her laugh, and she had a pretty smile. Her eyes were narrow and her hair was straight. Her bust was maybe a little tired after feeding two babies, but the way Ellen dressed hid it well.
Then one evening in the hotel bar in Alanya he was suddenly standing there, asking if he could get her a drink.
Ellen loved to recall that moment and blushed every time. He was so good looking and his eyes had a lovely glitter to them. The top few buttons of his shirt were undone and Ellen could see dark hair. And he was tall and tanned. All in all, he was incredibly attractive.
Ellen wasn’t a pushover by any means, but this man had really turned her on. He flattered and flirted, but never too much. Not so much that she had to take it seriously. They had such a lot to talk about. Ellen accepted several glasses of wine, and the time simply flew by. Just after midnight she said she had to go; the children – who had been keeping themselves amused – wanted to go back to the room, and Ellen didn’t really want to let them go on their own.
‘Will I see you tomorrow?’ the man asked.
Ellen nodded eagerly – so eagerly – and smiled. She did very much want to see him again, and was pleased that the interest was mutual.
Perhaps she had had her doubts when it was time to come home at the end of the holiday. They’d tried to meet for a while every day, always when the children were busy elsewhere. They hadn’t been to bed together, but he had kissed her on two different occasions. In the end it was Ellen who brought it up on their last evening.
‘Shall we see each other in Stockholm when we get back?’
A slightly evasive look came into his eyes, trying to avoid looking at her.
Damn, was Ellen’s immediate thought.
Then he drew himself up straight.
‘I have to work long hours,’ he said gently. ‘Very long hours,’ he clarified. ‘I’d like to see you again, but I really can’t promise anything.’
Ellen had assured him she didn’t need any promises at all. She just wanted to know there was some chance of them seeing each other again. Yes, there was, he assured her in his turn, clearly relieved she wasn’t demanding any guarantees. But he didn’t actually live in Stockholm, though his job brought him there fairly often. He would ring her next time he was passing through the city.
A week went by, and the rainy summer became a fact. And on one of all those rainy days he rang, and since then, Ellen hadn’t been able to stop smiling. How totally ridiculous, but what a glorious relief. The only fly in the ointment was the fact that they really did only meet as rarely as he had hinted they might, and then there was the almost complete lack of interest he showed in her children. But of course she understood that, too. Making him part of the children’s lives straight away would mean making the relationship too serious too fast. That was why, Ellen told herself, it was more rational to see him in his hotel room, the way he always suggested. They would go out for a meal at some expensive restaurant, and then go back to his room. Once they had spent that first night together, Ellen was sure. There was no way she would give this up without a fight. He was simply too good to be true.
Ellen looked at the calendar she had on her desk. She had counted the weeks since they got back from Turkey. Five weeks had passed. In those five weeks, she and her new love had seen each other four times. Bearing in mind that he didn’t live in town, Ellen thought that felt like a very solid start, a verdict confirmed by the friend who looked after the children for her when she went on her dates.
‘I’m so happy for you,’ she whooped.
Ellen fervently hoped her friend’s enthusiasm wouldn’t wear off, because it looked as though she was going to need a babysitter again soon. She had just reached for her mobile to call her lover, when her desk phone rang. It was the central command unit, asking her to take a call from someone with something to report about the missing girl, Lilian. Ellen accepted the call at once, and heard a reedy female voice at the other end.
‘It’s about that child that went missing,’ she said.
Ellen took it slowly.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘I think . . .’ the woman went quiet. ‘I think I might know who did it.’
More silence.
‘I think it might be a man I met,’ she said in a low voice.
Ellen frowned.
‘What makes you think that?’ she asked gently.
Ellen could hear the other woman breathing, not being sure whether to go on or not.
‘He was just horrible. Just . . . out of his mind.’
Another pause.
‘He was always talking about it, about doing it.’
‘Sorry,’ said Ellen. ‘You’ve lost me there. What was it he talked about doing?’
‘Putting everything right,’ the woman whispered. ‘He talked about putting everything right.’
The woman sounded as though she was starting to cry.
‘What did he want to put right?’
‘He said there were women who’d done things that meant they didn’t deserve their children,’ the woman said in a brittle voice. ‘That was what he wanted to put right.’
‘He was going to take their children from them?’
‘I never understood what he said, I never wanted to listen,’ said the woman, and now Ellen was sure she was crying. ‘And he hit me so hard, so hard. Shouted at me: I’d got to stop having nightmares, I’d got to fight against it. And I’d got to help put everything right.’
‘Sorry, but I don’t think I understand all this,’ Ellen said tentatively. ‘The nightmares and all that.’
‘He said,’ the woman sobbed, ‘that I’d got to stop dreaming, stop remembering what had happened before. He said that if I couldn’t do it, that showed I was weak. He said I’d got to be strong, to join the fight.’
The woman was silent for a moment, and then she said:
‘He called me his doll. He’d never be able to do it on his own; he must have another doll now.’
Ellen was so nonplussed that she really did not know what to say next. She decided to try to steer the conversation back to the bit about children.
‘Have you got children of your own,’ she asked the woman.
The woman gave a weary laugh.
‘No, I haven’t got any,’ she said. ‘And he hadn’t, either.’
‘Was that why he wanted to take another person’s child?’
‘No, no, no,’ the woman protested. ‘He wasn’t just going to take it; he didn’t want it for himself. The important thing was for the women to get their punishment, to have their children taken away from them.’
‘But why?’ Ellen asked in desperation.
The woman said nothing.
‘Hello?’ said Ellen.
‘I can’t talk any more now, I’ve already said too much,’ the woman whimpered.
‘Tell me your name,’ pleaded Ellen. ‘You’ve nothing to be afraid of. We can help you.’
Ellen admittedly doubted the confused woman’s story had any relevance for the case, but she was quite convinced the woman needed help.
‘I can’t tell you my name,’ the woman whispered. ‘I can’t. And don’t you go saying you can help me, because you lot have never been able to. But the women weren’t to be allowed to keep their children, because they didn’t deserve to.’
Why not, Ellen wondered. Out loud she said:
‘Where did you meet him? Tell me his name.’
‘I can’t tell you any more now, I just can’t.’
Ellen thought the woman was going to hang up, and tried to keep her on the line by asking:
‘But why did you ring if you don’t want to tell us who he is?’
The question made the other woman hesitate.
‘I don’t know what his name is. And the women didn’t deserve their children, because if you don’t like all children, you shouldn’t be allowed to have any at all.’
Then she ended the call, and Ellen sat there with the receiver in her hand, bewildered. She was sure she hadn’t found out anything of particular value. She hadn’t got a name, and the woman hadn’t explained why the man she knew had taken that particular child. Ellen shook her head, replaced the telephone receiver and wrote a short memo of the incoming call, which she put with all the rest. She made a mental note not to forget to mention it to the others in the team.
They were all waiting for Fredrika in the Den when she got back to HQ from Teodora Sebastiansson’s. It was several hours after lunchtime, and in a desperate attempt to boost her blood sugar level a little, Fredrika gulped down a chocolate wafer she found in the bottom of her handbag.
Alex Recht was standing by himself in one corner of the room. His expression was tense. He was deeply concerned. The case of Lilian Sebastiansson’s disappearance was developing in a direction he could never have predicted. Initial tests had confirmed the hair and clothes were Lilian’s. They had nothing else to go on at all. There wasn’t a single fingerprint on the box, inside or out. There were no traces of blood or anything like that. And the call on that goddamned courier company had yielded no information either.
When Fredrika turned up, Peder slipped in through the door behind her. Alex opened their third meeting in the Den in a very short space of time.
He called on Fredrika to report back on her meeting with Lilian’s grandmother. Alex had had misgivings from the very start about letting Fredrika conduct such vital questioning without the assistance of a more experienced colleague, but as Fredrika’s story emerged, Alex – and even Peder – realized they could scarcely have sent anyone other than Fredrika to interview such an eccentric old lady.
‘What was the overriding impression you brought away with you?’ Alex asked.
Fredrika put her head on one side.
‘I’m really not sure about her,’ she had to admit in the end. ‘I get the feeling she’s lying, but I don’t know how much or what about. I don’t know if she believes herself that her son would never have hit Sara, and I don’t know if she’s lying because she knows something or because she’s simply protecting her son, regardless of what he may have done.’
Alex nodded thoughtfully.
‘Have we got enough on him to issue an arrest warrant? Arrest him in his absence?’
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ was Fredrika’s forceful response. ‘The only thing we could use would be the earlier wife-battering.’
Alex was opening his mouth to say something, when Fredrika added:
‘And we know he takes a size 45 shoe and has a mother who’s pretty bloody disturbed.’
Alex was so surprised to hear Fredrika Bergman swear that he completely forgot what he was about to say.
‘Size 45 shoe,’ he eventually echoed.
‘Yes,’ confirmed Fredrika. ‘According to his mother he does. So it’s not entirely unthinkable that he might own a pair in size 46, as well.’
‘Well done, Fredrika, well done!’ said Alex, elated.
Fredrika’s face flushed blood red at the unexpected praise, and Peder looked as though he might like to kill himself. Or possibly Fredrika.
‘Well maybe we should go after him on a charge of assault and battery?’ he suggested in an attempt to grab a bit of attention at the table.
He ignored the fact that Fredrika had said the same thing a few seconds before.
‘Definitely,’ said Alex, nodding in agreement. ‘We’re not crossing him off the list until we find him. Issue an arrest warrant, for the assaults on his wife.’
Peder gave a slight nod.
Fredrika stared at him with an empty expression.
Ellen broke in.
‘There was a woman who rang a little while ago,’ she began hesitantly.
Alex absent-mindedly scratched a mosquito bite. Those blessed mosquitoes; surely they got earlier every year?
‘Yes?’
‘Well,’ sighed Ellen, ‘I don’t really know what to say. She wouldn’t identify herself and what she told me was, er . . . a right old jumble, to put it mildly. But basically it came down to her thinking she knew the man who’s taken Lilian.’
Everyone round the table turned their eyes to Ellen, who gave a deprecating wave of her arm.
‘I mean, she sounded confused. And scared. But it wasn’t at all clear what of. She said she thought it was a man she’d once been in a relationship with, and he had hit her.’
‘Which we know Gabriel Sebastiansson did, hit the woman he’s got now,’ Alex put in.
Ellen carried on shaking her head.
‘It was something else,’ she said, trying to get her thoughts in order. ‘She said she had nightmares that made him cross, and . . .’
‘What?’ interrupted Peder.
‘Yes, it was something like that she said. About her having nightmares and the guy getting angry. He was waging some campaign he wanted her to get involved in.’
‘What kind of campaign?’ asked Fredrika.
‘I couldn’t make it out,’ sighed Ellen. ‘The whole thing was a jumble, like I said. Something about some women not deserving their children. Something about her being his doll, him using dolls somehow. But it was all pretty unintelligible.’
‘And she didn’t give his name? The man who hit her?’ said Alex slowly.
‘No,’ said Ellen. ‘And like I said, she wouldn’t tell me her name, either.’
‘But you got the technical department to trace the call?’ asked Alex.
Ellen hesitated.
‘Er, no, I didn’t,’ she admitted. ‘It felt so weird, not serious. And you always get a few loonies ringing at times like this. But I can ring the technical unit as soon as the meeting’s over,’ she added.
‘Good,’ said Alex. ‘My guess is that your assessment of it is about right, but it does no harm to check who the caller was.’
He was about to go on when Fredrika signalled that she, too, had something to say.
‘Unless the woman wasn’t confused at all, just scared,’ she said.
Alex frowned.
‘If the woman’s been a victim of abuse, she might have turned to the police on other occasions, and felt she got no support. In that case, she’s pretty traumatized by her whole relationship with the police service, and she’s probably also still afraid of her ex. And in that case . . .’
‘Wait a bloody minute!’ Peder interrupted in frustration. ‘What do you mean, “traumatized by her relationship with the police”? It’s not the police force’s fault that nearly every bit of skirt who rings in and reports her guy takes him back time after time after time . . .’
Fredrika wearily held up her hand.
‘Peder, that’s not what I’m saying,’ she said calmly. ‘And I don’t think we need a debate on police tactics for preventing assaults on women right now. But if, and I mean if, she has been abused and felt she didn’t get any protection from the police, she’s probably very scared indeed. And that means it would be stupid to dismiss the call as confused.’
‘But if we think the whole thing through,’ interrupted Alex, ‘isn’t it a bit odd that she’s rung as soon as this?’
Nobody said anything.
‘What I mean is, how much do the media know as yet? The fact that a child has gone missing. That’s all. We haven’t told them about the parcel with the hair and there isn’t really anything to point to the girl having suffered anything worse than all the other kids reported missing in the course of a year.’
Each individual group member digested what Alex had said.
‘I still tend to think she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about,’ he concluded. ‘But of course we ought to follow up the call. We can’t exclude the possibility that it was Gabriel Sebastiansson she had a relationship with.’
‘Bu
t there must have been something in the story that she recognized from what her ex had told her,’ persisted Fredrika. ‘You’re quite right, Alex, when you say how little information we’ve released. It must be some tiny detail that caught her attention and rang a bell for her, and distinguished this story from all the other stories about missing children. And we can’t take it for granted that it actually is Gabriel Sebastiansson popping up here again . . .’
Alex had had enough, and quite forgot that he had been full of praise for Fredrika just a moment before.
‘Right, let’s get on with the meeting,’ he said brusquely. ‘There are always a variety of leads in an investigation, Fredrika, but for now we only have the one, and it looks very plausible, to say the least.’
Alex turned to the National Crime Squad analyst, whose name he couldn’t for the life of him recall.
‘Have any other witnesses been in touch? Any train passengers?’
The analyst was quick to nod. Oh yes, lots of people – lots and lots – had got in touch. Almost all the passengers from carriage number 2 where Sara and Lilian had been sitting. None of them could remember hearing or seeing anything. All of them could definitely remember seeing the child asleep, but nobody remembered anyone coming to fetch her.
‘The first time I talked to Sara, she said she and her daughter had chatted a bit with a woman sitting on the other side of the aisle. Has she rung in?’ Fredrika wanted to know.
The analyst took a sheaf of paper out of a plastic folder.
‘If the lady was sitting straight across the aisle,’ he said, extracting a sheet of paper, ‘that would mean she was in seat number 14. Nobody’s been in touch from seats 13 or 14.’
‘Let’s hope they soon will be,’ muttered Alex, rubbing his chin.
His eyes were drawn to the window. Somewhere out there was Lilian Sebastiansson. Most likely in the company of her sadistic father, who was prepared to stoop to anything to terrify his ex-wife. He fervently hoped they would find the girl soon.
Then Ellen’s mobile rang and she slipped out of the room to answer it.
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