The Chosen

by Kristina Ohlsson

  Fredrika reminded herself that they were children. And that they had been barefoot, frozen, exhausted, and terrified.

  They must have been so cold.

  She looked at her watch. Their first team meeting was due to begin shortly.

  Reluctantly she had begun to take an interest in the boys’ fathers, the men who had driven around and around the city searching for their sons while the mothers stayed in the community center, calling friends and acquaintances.

  Both men worked in security. Simon’s father was a specialist in IT security, Abraham’s in personal protection. Fredrika rapidly came to the conclusion that she was in the wrong job. Abraham’s father had successfully built up a company with something in the region of fifteen employees, offering security packages to everyone from embassies to small and medium-sized enterprises. Fredrika glanced at the homepage and wondered what kind of background you needed to start a business like that. She must remember to ask.

  Simon’s mother was an architect, while Abraham’s mother worked for her husband. That was all Fredrika managed to find out.

  Both families had a fascinating background. They had moved to Sweden in 2002; again, this was something worth asking about. Why would someone move from Israel to Stockholm?

  She found the pictures the parents had given to the police while they still believed that the children were alive; she gazed at the boys with their serious expressions for a long time.

  Now they were gone.

  She felt as if the photographs were burning her fingers. Who would target children, hunt them down, and shoot them?

  A thought came and went, and disappeared so quickly that she didn’t have time to catch it. She put down the pictures of the boys and dug out the photos of the place where they had been found.

  They were missing something vital. Something the tracks in the snow were telling them.

  Alex opened her door. “We’re about to get started,” he said.

  She got up and followed him down the corridor, still thinking about those footprints in the snow. Eventually she had to try to put her thoughts into words.

  “Alex, the boys’ footprints in the snow . . .”

  He looked at her.

  “Yes?”

  They stopped outside the meeting room—no longer the Lions’ Den. They were one floor higher up these days, and the room was known as the Snakes’ Nest. Fredrika presumed someone had come up with the name in connection with a Christmas party or some similar occasion; she much preferred the Lions’ Den.

  “I think we’re on the wrong track—no pun intended.”

  “In what way?”

  “We’re assuming that Simon and Abraham managed to escape from their abductor and that he chased them through the forest and out toward the golf course, where he shot them dead. But why was there a gap of twenty minutes between the two shots? And why did the one who was shot last leave the forest if he had seen his friend go down?”

  “Because they’re children,” Alex said, then immediately corrected himself. “They were children. The one who was still alive could have run over to the one who was shot first, thinking that something could be done.”

  “But twenty minutes is a long time.”

  “The second one might have stayed in the forest for a while before he broke cover. We did see indentations behind several trees, remember.”

  Fredrika shook her head.

  “Even if the snowstorm had eased by the time they took off, it was still minus five out there. And they were barefoot. That means it would be impossible to lie still in the snow for twenty minutes, then start running.”

  Why had no one seen anything?

  It was hard to believe that two boys could have been running for their lives so close to Sweden’s head of state, and no one had seen or heard a thing.

  Alex opened the door of the Snakes’ Nest.

  “They ran away and they were shot down,” he said. “What else is there to say?”

  It was obvious that he wanted to bring the discussion to an end, and Fredrika had to admit he was right. What else was there to say?

  There was only one alternative to Alex’s brief summary of events, and it was totally improbable.

  What if the boys hadn’t managed to escape but had been released?

  If that was the case, then why?

  The Snakes’ Nest was a really bad name for a meeting room. It carried overtones of a sex club rather than an appropriate venue for a collection of highly skilled investigators. Apart from that, Alex Recht felt entirely at home in the room, because it looked exactly the same as the Lions’ Den.

  He recognized everyone but hadn’t worked with all of them in the past. They all introduced themselves briefly, and once again Alex thought back to his former team. There had never been any problem when it came to bringing in additional resources for high-priority cases, and the same applied this time.

  “Okay,” he said. “Two young boys, Simon Eisenberg and Abraham Goldmann, were abducted in Östermalm yesterday afternoon when they were on their way to a tennis coaching session. Today they were found shot dead in the vicinity of the Royal Drottningholm Golf Club. We know that Simon was waiting for Abraham at a bus stop on Karlavägen, and we know that when Abraham was speaking to another friend on the phone, he said he had to end the call because he’d been offered a lift to the tennis center. The weather was terrible yesterday, so I don’t think either of the boys would need to be asked more than once if they would like a lift rather than wait for the bus—with the proviso that they knew the driver, which we believe they did.”

  “Do we know anything about the car that picked them up?” a colleague on loan from the National Crime Unit asked.

  “No.”

  “Any thoughts about who might have been driving?”

  “No again. We might have a better idea when we’ve spoken to the parents.”

  “But we think the person who picked them up is the same person who shot them?”

  “That’s our working hypothesis at the moment,” Alex said.

  He looked around the room: representatives from CSI and several investigators.

  “We’re expecting the postmortem report later, but the forensic pathologist has provided us with some key information that we need to take into account at this stage. First of all, there is no sign of sexual interference with either of the boys.”

  A collective sigh of relief, as if such a crime wouldn’t have been eclipsed by the fact that they had been murdered. But in principle Alex felt the same: it was good to know that the children had been spared that ordeal.

  “Secondly, there are no defensive injuries whatsoever. There are no indications that they had been fighting, or that they had been hit. No bruises. However, they do have cuts and scratches on their feet and ankles from running through the forest.”

  “But how did they manage to get away from their abductor?” asked a woman who hadn’t managed to get a place at the table but was sitting in a corner.

  “We don’t know,” Alex replied. “On the other hand, I’m sure none of us seriously believes that two ten-year-old boys managed to knock down an adult male who wears size 91/2 shoes.”

  The room fell silent.

  “Have we heard anything about the murder weapon?” someone asked.

  “Later this afternoon.”

  “Are we ruling out a link between this case and the shooting of the preschool teacher?”

  “We’re not ruling out anything until we know for certain,” Alex said. “The priority is to compare the murder weapons as soon as the information comes through.”

  And then, he thought, we have to rule out the possibility that the shot fired from the roof the previous day might have been meant for one of the children standing next to Josephine. Or their parents.

  The pressure was mounting. They had a lot to do.

  “I need hardly point out that we have major gaps in our knowledge at the moment,” Alex said. “We know when the boys went missing and when they were found
, but we have no idea where they were in the interim or what they were subjected to. Nor do we know if it’s pure chance that they were shot on the golf course or if the location was chosen deliberately.”

  “So we’re sure they were shot there and not somewhere else, then moved to the spot where the bodies were found?” a colleague asked.

  Alex nodded to one of the CSIs to take over.

  “Based on their footprints in the snow, we have been able to conclude that they were shot where they lay. The bullets were fired from the front and hit them in the chest. We found them lying on their backs, and there is nothing to suggest that they were moved even a fraction of an inch. Then there are the larger prints in the snow. Shoes—men’s size and style. They show that the killer went over to the victims after he had shot them, probably to check that they were actually dead and to put the paper bags over their heads.”

  Fredrika raised her hand.

  “What else can you tell us about these larger prints? The pattern of movement in relation to the boys’ footprints.”

  The question made the CSI lean over and confer with a colleague before he answered.

  “Actually, when it comes to the adult’s tracks, we have come across a number of things we’re finding puzzling. It’s clear that the boys ran back and forth and around in circles in the forest; the man seems to have followed them at a distance, never getting very close. It doesn’t look as if he was moving as fast as the boys. The footprints are very distinct; the snow hasn’t been kicked up and scuffed, which is what happens when you run fast.”

  A murmur spread around the room, but Alex didn’t take his eyes off Fredrika. He had seen her looking exactly like this on so many occasions: on full alert, right down to her fingertips. She was formulating a new theory. Alex realized he was smiling. She obviously hadn’t lost her edge while she was away.

  “Exactly how did he move around the bodies? Can you explain?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, can you tell how he acted after he’d shot the first child? Did he go up to the body at that point, or did he wait until he’d shot them both?”

  The CSI nodded to show he understood.

  “That’s another anomaly,” he said. “It looks as if the killer went up to the children separately. There are no tracks linking the bodies, nothing to indicate that he walked from one to the other. One could therefore conclude that he shot one of the boys, went over to the body, then went all the way back to the track, where we think his vehicle was parked. This may have been to reload his gun, but that’s just a theory. Then it looks as if he came back out of the forest.”

  “Drove out the second child and shot him when he was fifty yards from his friend,” Fredrika said.

  “That is a possible scenario.”

  Alex tried to process what he was hearing. A man walking purposefully among snow-covered trees. A man who didn’t appear to be in any hurry. Who didn’t leave until he had finished what he had set out to achieve.

  What he had set out to achieve.

  Bloody hell.

  The realization struck Alex like a punch in the face.

  Fredrika put his thoughts into words:

  “I don’t think the boys escaped. I think he let them go. One at a time. Then he pursued his prey like a hunter. The paper bags over their heads aren’t necessarily a hidden message meant for a particular recipient; they could just as easily be his calling card.”

  The meeting had lasted no longer than fifteen minutes, but it had stirred things up for Peder Rydh. Efraim Kiel had come to see him. In spite of the fact that he appeared calm and collected, Peder sensed an air of frustration, a degree of stress that he couldn’t quite figure out.

  Kiel asked questions about the murdered teacher and the boys; wondered if there was any information about whether the killer had marked his victims, or left some kind of calling card at the scenes of the crimes. He was particularly interested in the murder of Josephine.

  Peder was surprised and confused.

  A calling card?

  Not that he’d heard of, no.

  But if that was the case, he was certain the police would keep quiet about that particular detail. It could jeopardize the entire investigation if there was a leak about what made this killer unique.

  “I do realize that,” Efraim Kiel said. “But I’m not asking you what you’ve read in the online press but what you’ve found out from your former colleagues.”

  “Next to nothing,” Peder replied.

  Truthfully.

  “Well, I suggest you contact someone you can trust and find out how far they’ve got. Because we need that information.”

  Do we?

  Peder didn’t like Kiel’s tone of voice, nor did he understand what we meant. Wasn’t Kiel supposed to have gone home by now?

  Then Kiel asked what Peder thought about the two cases.

  “Are they connected?” he said.

  Peder hesitated. How much did he dare say?

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “We can’t rule out the possibility that the bullet was meant for someone else.”

  Efraim Kiel looked pleased.

  Satisfied.

  “I agree. It would be unfortunate if any other members of the community died just because we ignored the obvious, wouldn’t you say?”

  It wasn’t a question.

  It felt more like a threat.

  “Of course,” Peder agreed, trying to sound as if he were on top of things, as if he understood the background to their conversation. Which he didn’t. Not at all.

  “I’ll be staying in town for a while,” Efraim Kiel said finally. “And while I’m here we’ll be working together. Understood?”

  Peder understood. He nodded, got to his feet, and shook hands.

  He understood that he didn’t understand people like Kiel, that he had never been a part of that world. And when he was alone in his office with a cup of coffee a little while later, he couldn’t help wondering: Why was someone like Efraim Kiel interested in the murder of a teacher and two boys in Stockholm?

  Peder thought about going home. The working day was over; the phone had stopped ringing. There was a high level of anxiety among the members of the community; people had started asking whether they ought to keep their children out of school. Peder didn’t think that was necessary.

  There were two inquisitive journalists for every anxious parent. In the police service such calls went straight to the information unit, but at the Solomon Community, Peder was expected to deal with them personally. When it came to that particular aspect of his job, he felt weak and inadequate. And he had absolutely no patience.

  And then there was Efraim Kiel, asking questions about calling cards at the scene of the crime. Why hadn’t he gone back to Israel as planned? Peder didn’t like the feeling that someone was keeping an eye on him, questioning his actions. However, was it advisable to fall out with a man like Efraim Kiel over the issue?

  He thought not.

  It was almost six o’clock, and Eden Lundell was already on the way home to her family. She was feeling better since she had been to see GD and demanded to know what they were going to do about Efraim Kiel.

  “We have to be patient,” GD had said. “Wait for him to make a mistake. So far all he’s done is move between his hotel and the Solomon Community in Östermalm. We can hardly deport him for that.”

  From a logical point of view, Eden knew that GD was absolutely right, but on a more emotional level, it wasn’t enough. She knew both Efraim and his employer, Mossad. Something was going on; otherwise he wouldn’t have stayed for so long.

  She was a little calmer after speaking to a former colleague in the National Crime Unit; he had been in touch with the Solomon Community because of the murdered teacher and told her that the community was in the process of appointing a new head of security. That sounded like something Efraim might be involved in.

  But guesses weren’t enough for Eden. She wanted to know exactly what she was ta
lking about. The simplest method would be to confront him, of course, demand an answer. But could she really do that? Did she have the strength to see him?

  I don’t think so.

  It took her less than fifteen minutes to walk from Police HQ at Polhemsgatan 30 to their apartment on Sankt Eriksplan.

  “Perfect,” Mikael had said when they first went to see it. “We’ll be able to walk to Vasa Park with the girls.”

  Eden had been taken aback, then she had burst out laughing.

  “Of course we will, darling,” she had said, squeezing his hand.

  In spite of the fact that they both knew that the only person who would be taking the girls to the park was Mikael.

  A wonderful aroma filled her nostrils as she opened the front door.

  Her daughters were drawn to the sound of her key in the lock like iron filings to a magnet. They raced into the hallway and hurled themselves at her. Eden opened her arms and gave them a big hug.

  You do know I love you, even though I rarely say it out loud?

  Twin girls. Non-identical in appearance, and even more different when it came to their personalities. Saba was like Eden, spirited and straight-backed, stubborn and uncompromising. She even looked like a copy of her mother. Dani, on the other hand . . . Sometimes it actually hurt when Eden looked at the child who had been born fourteen minutes after her sister.

  Because Dani was a carbon copy of the twins’ father.

  But Eden was the only one who could see it.

  The apartment was almost completely silent when Fredrika Bergman got home. The only sound came from the TV in the living room. For a moment she was gripped by an illogical fear that something had happened.

  “Hello?” she said when she had hung up her coat and taken off her boots.

  She walked quickly down the hallway and glanced into the kitchen, which was empty.

  Her son came rushing toward her out of nowhere. He was grinning from ear to ear and babbling at the top of his voice. He was a clever boy, but unfortunately he couldn’t talk yet.