The Chosen

by Kristina Ohlsson

  She picked him up and held him tight. Inhaled the smell of him, stroked his hair. Tried not to think about the boys she had seen lying in the snow that morning. Tomorrow the parents would be interviewed again. A colleague had asked a few brief questions when they were informed of the deaths; neither family had been able to think of a single person who would have any reason to do this to them. And both couples had alibis for the time when the boys went missing. That was enough to begin with.

  Saga came racing after her little brother.

  “Daddy’s reading us a story,” she said.

  Fredrika bent down, put an arm around her, and kissed her cheek.

  “Lovely,” she said.

  Saga took her hand, pulling Fredrika toward her bedroom.

  Spencer was sitting on his daughter’s bed with a book of fairy tales on his knee. He looked abandoned. His silver-gray hair was sticking up, and his shirt was creased.

  A mature parent of two small children.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi yourself,” he said, looking up.

  They smiled at one another.

  She moved toward the bed, and Saga immediately scrambled up and onto Spencer’s lap. Fredrika put down her son, who crawled under his daddy’s arm. Fredrika joined them on the edge of the bed.

  If I wasn’t around, would he be able to bring them up himself?

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Have you eaten?”

  It was only six thirty, but the children ate early.

  “We had macaroni and sausage an hour ago. There’s some left if you want it.”

  She did. She got up and went into the kitchen, took out a plate, and filled it with food from the pans on the stove. As she warmed it in the microwave, she allowed herself to reflect on the small things that they had lost since having children. There had been a time when they ate only delicacies and drank obscenely expensive wines when they got together. On the other hand, back then they had had nothing else apart from the food and wine.

  If she was forced to lose her current life . . .

  If someone took her children away . . .

  Would she be able to replace them with a good cheese and a glass of fine wine?

  She swallowed hard. Some things couldn’t be changed; it went against nature. These days she couldn’t care less what she ate, just as long as her family was alive and healthy.

  She tried to make sense of all the images that had come crowding in during the day. The boys who had died, their grieving parents. And she still couldn’t shake off the feeling that they had overlooked something, that the material they had to work on was somehow too much and yet at the same time too little.

  We’re missing something, she thought again. Something fundamental and important. Something to do with the Eisenberg and Goldmann families. And the paper bags. The killer’s calling card. Suddenly Fredrika was convinced that there would be more victims. She just didn’t know when.

  • • •

  Alex wasn’t really a fan of unwritten rules, particularly as they usually passed him by and made him appear clumsy and insensitive. Which he wasn’t. But there was one rule that he always observed to the letter: the one that said he wasn’t allowed to talk about work at home if the case involved children or young people who had died or been mistreated.

  The background to this rule was both simple and painful. That was how he and Diana had met: he had been investigating her daughter’s disappearance. He had promised Diana that he would never stop looking, that he would make sure she got her daughter back. Which she did. But it took three years before he found the place where her killer had laid her to rest.

  So Alex didn’t mention the two boys when he got home.

  “Have you had a good day?” Diana said as they stood in the kitchen with a glass of wine.

  “Absolutely,” Alex said, taking a sip.

  She stroked his arm.

  “Could you make a salad?”

  “Of course.”

  If his children could see him now . . . Over all the years he had been married to their mother, they had never seen him make a salad. Or anything else, for that matter. Lena had taken care of all the cooking, along with everything else in the household.

  At an early stage Diana had made it clear that she didn’t want things to be that way. She wanted them to build and look after their home together. They had never argued about it; he had simply fallen in with her wishes. He was still embarrassed to think about how he had let Lena fight to keep the home and family running smoothly while he worked.

  “It doesn’t matter whether you get home at six o’clock or ten o’clock,” Diana had said. “I’ll wait for you, and we’ll eat when you get in. And it will be a meal that we have prepared together.”

  Simple and fair. A routine he had grown to love.

  But the boys with the paper bags over their heads refused to leave him in peace. They were in his thoughts as he washed arugula and sliced tomatoes.

  Just before he left work, he had received the news he had been dreading. The news he didn’t want to hear.

  The boys had been shot with the same gun as the preschool teacher. Therefore there was an undeniable connection between the two cases.

  And outside, the snow began to fall once more.

  CONCLUSION

  FRAGMENT III

  It is time to remove the bodies. The child who is still alive has already been taken to Karolinska Hospital in Solna, but her mother refused to go with her.

  “She won’t need me until she regains consciousness” was all she said when someone pointed out that there was room for her in the ambulance if she wanted to go with her daughter.

  The inspector is in hell.

  The air in the apartment is thin, lacking in oxygen, and he has to fight for every breath.

  Eventually he goes over and opens the bedroom window.

  The dead are placed on trolleys, ready to be wheeled out of the room.

  Then at last the woman moves; until now she has remained standing by the doorway as if she has been turned to stone.

  Slowly she walks over to her husband and looks at his lifeless body.

  “He will never come back,” she says.

  It is impossible to tell whether this is a question or a statement. The inspector decides to act as if it is the former.

  “No, he won’t.”

  The inspector watches as the woman processes what he has just said. But what can he see in her face?

  Relief?

  Of course not. Why would she be relieved because her husband is dead?

  Then she turns to the child.

  “I will miss you until the day I die,” she says.

  She bends down and kisses the child’s forehead, then she straightens up and moves back a step.

  The scene is so upsetting that the inspector doesn’t know what to do with himself.

  And he cannot take his eyes off the violin. Music can have a healing power, but the inspector isn’t sure it will be enough in this case. Particularly if the child who has been taken to the hospital dies.

  If that happens, it will all be over.

  When the trolleys have been wheeled out, he goes over to the woman who has been robbed of her family. He doesn’t touch her but stands close.

  “How can I help you?” he says. “If there’s anything at all . . . I’ll do whatever you ask.”

  Her gaze is fixed on something outside the bedroom window.

  “Thank you, but I don’t need anything.”

  And so they stand there. All around them the CSIs work silently and with total concentration. You get the feeling that if they interrupted their task for just one second, they would burst into tears. The inspector feels as if he is walking on brittle glass. One false move and the ground will collapse beneath his feet.

  During his entire career, he has never known a greater tragedy. Never.

  But that is not the worst thing.

  The worst thing is that he doesn’t understand what has happened. Why
the Paper Boy came to this particular address and took fresh victims.

  He daren’t ask. Not right now.

  He doesn’t need to; she tells him anyway.

  “You’re wondering why he came here,” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s my fault.”

  “None of this is your fault.”

  She nods slowly and then he sees them. The tears. Welling up in her eyes and spilling over.

  “It’s my fault,” she says again. “I have always known that I wouldn’t get away with what I did.”

  He feels a spurt of anger, shakes his head.

  “What on earth do you think you’ve done, for God’s sake?”

  But she doesn’t answer. She is not yet ready to share her secret.

  EARLIER

  The Third Day

  Friday, January 27, 2012

  More fucking snow. A punishment from God for a crime he wasn’t even aware of. Efraim Kiel was sitting in his hotel room, staring at the grainy images on his computer. He couldn’t see a fucking thing. If he hadn’t stolen the tape from the CCTV camera, he would have gone down to reception and asked what kind of useless fucking camera they were using.

  It had been laughably simple to get hold of the film. He had installed similar cameras elsewhere; it took him less than an hour to locate the computer where the sequences were saved. Bizarrely, it was in the luggage storage room. It wasn’t clear if this was a temporary arrangement, but he hoped so, otherwise he felt sorry for the hotel management; they must have had terrible advice when they installed their security system.

  However, it had made it much easier for Efraim to get hold of the images that would show him who had left the message at the desk. He had his suspicions but was praying to every higher power he could think of that he would be proved wrong.

  And now he was sitting in his room, trying to make sense of what he was looking at.

  A blizzard.

  A chimney sweep in a darkroom.

  And that bothered him, because he wouldn’t have expected images from this kind of camera to look like that.

  Irritation and a feeling that was entirely unfamiliar to him—anxiety—spread through his body like an itch. Could someone have sabotaged the camera? Put something over the lens?

  But how was that possible when reception was always staffed?

  He told himself to calm down. There were a thousand ways to get into buildings and areas where you weren’t supposed to be. You dressed up as a tradesman. Someone who had come to install cable TV. A cleaner. Anyone at all who opened doors that were otherwise locked.

  The Paper Boy could have easily gotten into the hotel lobby and done what he wanted to do.

  Efraim clenched his fist and pressed it against his forehead. He had to stop thinking about the Paper Boy as an individual, as someone who actually existed.

  It’s only a story, a myth. He doesn’t exist.

  But in that case who had sent him the message?

  He was starting to think that it must be the Paper Boy who had once lived. Who had not been a myth. But if that was the case, then Efraim had a difficult task ahead, because that Paper Boy couldn’t be left to his own devices; he would need help, someone to bring him to his senses.

  Efraim’s heart rate was normally forty-seven beats per minute, but at the moment it was significantly higher. And it was pounding, as if it was having difficulty in pumping the blood around his body. He got up and went into the bathroom. Washed his face and dried it with a hand towel.

  He had to pull himself together.

  Focus.

  The Paper Boy had issued an invitation to the dance, but Efraim wasn’t interested in meeting him halfway. He couldn’t really understand why he didn’t just pack his bag and go home, why he was still here.

  Because I know I can’t get away, wherever I hide.

  Resolutely he left his hotel room.

  As he closed the door, he saw the note.

  It was lying on the floor outside his room. Out in the open, so that anyone passing by could read what it said. Then again, they probably wouldn’t understand it, because once again the message was written in Hebrew.

  A piece of white paper with black characters.

  I can see you

  all the time

  but you can’t see me.

  Strange, don’t you think?

  His coffee had gone cold. Peder Rydh didn’t really want it anyway. Perhaps he needed a glass of wine, or a whisky. Although it was too early in the day. Even when he had been at his lowest, he had never drunk alcohol for breakfast.

  He was sitting at his desk, frowning. How the hell was he supposed to find the answer Efraim had demanded? He wanted to know whether the person—or persons—who had shot the teacher and the two boys had left behind any kind of calling card. He would never be able to get that kind of detail out of the police, and Alex certainly wouldn’t tell him something like that.

  But perhaps he could try someone he knew in the National Crime Unit.

  Because hadn’t Alex said that the case of the murdered teacher had been passed over to the team specializing in organized crime? Peder knew at least one of the investigators on that team—not very well, but he didn’t think that was necessary. Not when it came to that particular person.

  His colleague answered almost straightaway. He sounded stressed at first, then surprised when he realized who was calling.

  “Peder, it’s been a long time!”

  You could say that.

  “How are you?” his colleague said.

  “Fine, thanks.”

  After one or two more polite exchanges, Peder explained what he was after. He rarely answered honestly when someone asked “How are you?” or “How are things?” Nobody really wanted to know the truth.

  “Are you involved in the investigation into the fatal shooting outside the Solomon school?” he said.

  His colleague sounded extremely dubious when he replied.

  “The teacher, you mean? Yes, I am.”

  “Listen, I know I’m not part of the job anymore,” Peder said, although it still pained him to say the words out loud. “But I’m working as head of security with the Solomon Community, and as I’m sure you understand, what’s happened has given rise to a hell of a lot of questions.”

  “Sorry, but the whole thing is proscribed. I can’t—”

  “I’m not asking you to. I’m just wondering whether you found anything, some object the killer might have left behind. A calling card.”

  “Where?”

  That was a good question. Where? What had Efraim meant?

  “Where he was lying when he fired the shot,” Peder said eventually. “Or anywhere else inside the building.”

  “Not a thing. He seems to have been an ice-cold bastard. He just went up there, did what he’d come to do, and left.”

  “Okay. Thanks very much, and I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “No problem; sorry I couldn’t help.”

  Peder ended the call, then got to his feet, put on his coat, and left the building. The weather had deteriorated; soft clouds filled the sky, making him shiver.

  He went across the street to the Solomon school, nodding to the guards outside as he went inside. He recognized the secretary at reception; she had shown him around the previous day. Her greeting was a little subdued; Peder knew there was to be a service for Josephine and the boys in the synagogue later that morning. He wondered if he was expected to attend or stay away.

  “How can I help?” she said.

  He hardly knew himself. He supposed he was still looking for calling cards, but how could the secretary help him with that?

  “I just wanted to check that everything is okay,” he said. “You haven’t had any strange phone calls, anything like that?”

  He sounded like a police officer, but she didn’t appear to react. She shook her head.

  “No, nothing.”

  “Good, that’s excellent. And no unexpected packages or mess
ages?”

  “No.”

  Of course not. What had he expected? That the killer would have sent a calling card over by courier?

  “But we have had a huge amount of flowers,” the secretary said, smiling for the first time. “Look.”

  She pointed to a table at the other end of the room; it was almost completely covered in flowers and potted plants.

  “We’re going to display them in the hall later so that the children can see how many people care.”

  “That’s lovely,” Peder said. “Are they from community members?”

  “Mostly, but some have come from outside.”

  She got up and went over to the table.

  “For example, this one arrived yesterday,” she said, showing Peder a large red flower; he had no idea what it was called.

  “Lovely,” he said again.

  He noticed that the waste bin under the secretary’s desk was overflowing with the discarded paper the flowers had been wrapped in; some had spilled over onto the floor.

  “Goodness, look at the mess,” she said apologetically when she noticed Peder looking at the bin. “I’ll tidy it up in a minute.”

  He could see a number of paper bags on the floor and assumed they had been used for delivery. He crouched down automatically to take a closer look. Ordinary paper bags, some bearing address labels giving details of both the sender and the recipient.

  One of the bags caught his attention. A brown, medium-sized bag with no label—but someone had drawn on it.

  “That was one of the first to arrive,” the secretary said. “A beautiful chrysanthemum.”

  She pointed and Peder picked up the plant, which was in a plain white pot.

  “No card,” he said.

  “No,” the secretary said unhappily. “Some of the cards must have fallen off, which is annoying. Or they were attached to the bags and I just didn’t notice them.”

  Peder looked at the bag once again. No name anywhere.

  But there was a drawing.

  “Don’t throw this one away,” he said. “Show it to the police.”