The Chosen

by Kristina Ohlsson

  “But why?”

  “Because I think it might be important.”

  The morning after yet another night of very little sleep. The dead boys haunted her, mixed up with other cases that Fredrika Bergman had investigated in the past. Cases where children had fared badly.

  Life was fragile. Small mistakes could have disastrous consequences. Fredrika had seen it happen more times than she could remember, and yet she was always equally surprised.

  She didn’t know whether Carmen and Gideon Eisenberg had made any mistakes that might explain why they had lost their son. There wasn’t a sound when she and Alex walked into their house the morning after they had been told that their son had been shot dead out on the island of Lovön. It had been a long night; that was clear from their exhausted faces.

  Did grief have a different shape and color in a foreign land? Perhaps people dealt differently with heavy losses if they had grown up in a place where peace never seemed to last, where there was always unrest and no one could ever be sure how tomorrow would turn out.

  Fredrika realized she felt completely at a loss with the Eisenbergs. Carmen, to whom Fredrika had spoken the previous day, was sitting at the table with her husband. He had reached across the polished surface and placed his hand on hers and was just gazing at her.

  No tears, no screaming.

  Not then.

  Not in front of Fredrika and Alex.

  But she could see that they had been crying, and no doubt there would be more tears once she and Alex had left.

  The parents had been given answers to the most important questions at the hospital.

  No, it didn’t look as if their son had been subjected to violence or physical abuse before his death.

  No, he wouldn’t have suffered when he died; death would have been instantaneous.

  However, they had not been told that the boys had had bags over their heads or that they appeared to have been hunted down by their killer. There would be a time for that kind of information, but this wasn’t it.

  There would be a short interview today, nothing more. Not on the first day.

  It was less than forty-eight hours since Fredrika and Alex had been talking to Josephine’s parents about the loss of their daughter. Fredrika thought about the three deaths, trying to digest the news that they now had proof that there was a connection.

  Her own words still echoed in her brain: the paper bags could be a calling card. A serial killer’s calling card. In which case they could expect more victims.

  But that kind of thing just doesn’t happen. The worst nightmares never become reality. And serial killers don’t exist. Not in real life.

  Fredrika and Alex were sitting side by side. The table seemed too small for two grieving parents and two stressed-out investigators. The whole kitchen was too small. And the silence was too huge.

  It was Alex who broke it.

  “At the moment we don’t know why this has happened,” he said, speaking slowly as if choosing every single word with the greatest care. “But I can promise you that we will spare no effort in this case. We will do everything, and I mean everything, to find the person or persons behind the murders of Simon and Abraham.”

  He stopped speaking, allowing what he had just said to sink in. That was how he built trust: by focusing on clarity and pledging only what was reasonable. He had said they would do everything they could to find the perpetrator, and that was true. He had not, however, promised that they would succeed, which was also true, unfortunately. Sometimes they failed. It had happened as recently as last autumn, when the person responsible for hijacking Flight 573 got away.

  But they knew who the guilty party was, and they were still looking.

  They would never stop.

  Sometimes that was as far as they got, even if it was incredibly frustrating.

  “What’s your take on all this?” Alex said. “Do you have any enemies or unresolved disputes?”

  They had been asked the question before, and they would be asked again. Sooner or later they would remember something that was key to the inquiry.

  Carmen and Gideon Eisenberg looked at one another, and Fredrika knew what they were thinking. Unresolved disputes? Of such magnitude that they had cost their son his life?

  They both shook their head.

  “No,” Gideon said. “No, we haven’t.”

  At first glance they were a harmonious couple. Same sense of humor, same character. But Fredrika thought she could sense something else beneath the surface. There was a fragility about Gideon that she couldn’t see in Carmen. She was the stronger one, although Fredrika couldn’t imagine how much strength she would need to get through what lay ahead: burying her son and learning to live with his absence.

  “And what about Simon?” she said. “Did he have any enemies?”

  Gideon stared at her as if she had lost her mind.

  “He was a child.”

  Fredrika swallowed hard. Children could be cruel; they could do the most unforgivable things. And behind every humiliated child was a frustrated parent determined to stand up for their offspring.

  Alex understood what she was asking.

  “We believe Simon and Abraham were picked up in a car by an adult they knew. Would they have gotten in the car if they didn’t know that person well?”

  “No,” Carmen said firmly. “Neither of them would have done that, particularly not Abraham.”

  Which was interesting, because Abraham wasn’t her son.

  “How can you be so sure?” Fredrika asked.

  “His parents were very strict about that,” Gideon said. “And we were the same with Simon, although Abraham was more receptive to rules.”

  Another peculiar turn of phrase.

  “ ‘More receptive to rules’?”

  “Both his parents have a military background,” Carmen explained quietly. “Abraham is . . . was . . . very impressed by that. Discipline appealed to him; clear guidelines. It went hand in hand with his arrogance. As you know, being late didn’t bother him at all. Simon was a more normal child; he usually did as we said, but occasionally he went his own way.”

  “But he would never have gotten into a stranger’s car,” Gideon said, sounding decisive for the first time.

  Fredrika allowed her curiosity to take over.

  “Could I ask about your background?”

  The couple exchanged glances.

  “I studied engineering at university in Jerusalem, and I now work in IT security,” Gideon said. “Carmen is an architect.”

  Fredrika and Alex already knew that; she had asked about their backgrounds.

  “What did you do when you lived in Israel?”

  “The same.”

  The answer was curt and evasive.

  “So you don’t have a military background like Abraham’s parents?”

  Gideon’s expression was dark as he looked at Fredrika.

  “Everyone in Israel has a ‘military background.’ Like eighty-five percent of the male population, I did three years’ military service.”

  “Why did you move to Sweden?” Alex asked.

  Carmen sighed.

  “We had family here, and Gideon had been over several times through work. Israel can be . . . trying. If it’s not the heat, it’s the political situation. We were tired of all the tension. I don’t know if you remember, but 2002 was a terrible year in Israel. That was when the violence reached its absolute peak following the second intifada. And when we found out we were having a baby—”

  She broke off, unable to go on.

  And Fredrika, who had carried and given birth to two babies, felt the tears well up.

  Get a grip. Get a grip.

  Alex looked from Gideon to Carmen, his gaze steady but sympathetic.

  “You can ring me at anytime,” he said, giving them his card. “About anything you think could be of interest in the investigation, or if you have questions.”

  He got to his feet.

  “We’ll leave you
in peace.”

  The four of them walked from the kitchen to the hallway. Fredrika thought back to what Carmen had said about their reasons for leaving Israel. It was a cruel irony that they had come to Sweden to escape terror and violence, only to see their firstborn murdered.

  She realized she had one more question.

  “Did Simon spend a lot of time on the Internet?”

  Gideon put his arm around Carmen’s shoulders.

  “No more than other children, I imagine.”

  Fredrika had no idea what that meant. Her own children were too young for computers, and if their father had his way, they would never go anywhere near one. They would learn to use a typewriter, and if they wanted to play games, they could play chess.

  Carmen leaned against her husband.

  “He discovered a new forum only a month or so ago,” she said. “On the Internet, I mean. Abraham showed him, although we didn’t really like it. Super Troopers, it’s called.”

  A forum. A place for people to meet. Possibly a place for a killer to find his victims.

  “Why didn’t you like it?” Alex asked.

  “I got the impression that nobody was being themselves,” Carmen said. “Everyone had an alias, and it was nothing but a place to boast and show off. It seemed to attract young boys so that they could tell each other how to excel at various activities.”

  They would have to check this out. It might be a dead end, but it could be important.

  “Did Abraham and Simon also have aliases?” Fredrika said.

  A single tear ran down Carmen’s cheek.

  “Both boys used their real names for some aspects, but they wanted an alias as well. Abraham was keen to make a bold impression as usual and called himself the Warrior. But not Simon.”

  “No?”

  “No, he called himself the Paper Boy.”

  There was no such thing as sleeping in in Eden Lundell’s world. She got up at six and liked to go for a run before she woke the rest of the family. Then she would make breakfast and eat in silence. Her daughters did the same.

  Eden loathed noise. Some people seemed to think that kids couldn’t help being loud, but Eden didn’t agree. She had walked out of a restaurant halfway through dinner more than once because children at nearby tables didn’t know how to behave. How hard could it be to turn small people into decent human beings?

  Mikael didn’t necessarily agree; he thought she was too harsh and said that kids have to be allowed to be kids. No one was denying that, but Eden couldn’t see any contradiction between being a child and understanding the importance of not acting like a monster.

  She dropped the girls off at day care and walked to work.

  Mikael had a meeting with a youth group and had left home early. He was always keen to get to work, and that gave Eden peace of mind. He was needed out in the real world, beyond the home that he and Eden had built for themselves and their children.

  Eden loved her job, too. The first thing she did when she got into the office was to make sure she was up to speed with the counterterrorism unit’s latest initiative. Meeting after meeting. Why did they have to spend so much time stuck in a room with other people, talking? Talking and talking, as if that was what would bring peace on earth. She remembered the previous day’s sad excursion to Drottningholm; the children lying in the snow. How much would it help them if the grown-ups in the world shut themselves in a room with crap air-conditioning and talked?

  Not one fucking jot.

  The Solomon Community seemed to have abandoned its attempts to get her involved in the case. Just as well, because she didn’t want to know. Her parents would have been bitterly disappointed if they had known that she was turning her back on her people. Since they had left London for Israel, the relationship had been strained. Mikael had actually wanted to go with them and had put the idea to Eden as a serious suggestion.

  She had wondered if he had lost his mind. He wasn’t even Jewish—he was a priest in the Swedish church—so why the hell would he want to emigrate to Israel? A country smaller than the province of Småland, surrounded by countries that in the best-case scenario might possibly accept its existence but would never make the effort to develop good relations. She had said the same thing to her parents, wondering why her British mother and Swedish father wanted to become Israeli citizens.

  But no one knew the real reason why she could never consider going to live in Israel.

  Efraim Kiel.

  The man who had almost cost her everything; the man she sometimes still dreamed of at night, damn him. The man who was now wandering the streets of Stockholm. Much too close for comfort.

  When the cavalcade of meetings was finally over, she hurried back to the glass box that served as her office. She closed the door and found the latest surveillance reports. What had Efraim been up to overnight and during the morning?

  Not much, as it turned out.

  He had left the hotel and gone to the Solomon Community. Just as on the day before, he had stood outside inspecting the bullet hole in the wall. He had also spoken to the security guards before going inside.

  Was he a part of the community’s security setup? She didn’t think so.

  But he was obviously interested in the deaths that had shaken the group over the last couple of days. There was nothing strange about that; he had an impressive background in intelligence and would no doubt be able to make a significant contribution to the investigation.

  Eden tapped her pen impatiently on the desk.

  The case was being investigated by the Swedish police. There was no way they would let Efraim or anyone else from the community into their work. She opened up the homepages of the major newspapers and glanced through the articles that had already been written about the murders. Alex Recht was quoted in several instances.

  Eden knew she could call him; that wouldn’t be a problem. She reached for the phone, then put it down. What would she say? What was it she wanted to know?

  Säpo had nothing to do with the cases, and Eden didn’t know any of the victims. She could, of course, pretend that she was just generally concerned; play the Jewish card. But bearing in mind that she had turned her back on the Solomon Community, that went against the grain.

  You see, I do have scruples.

  She looked up from the screen, glanced out of the glass walls of her office. It was as if Säpo had been lifted out of the world around it, cut off from the universe. In a way it was a universe of its own, enclosed and turned away from everything else. When she saw the heavy snow coming down, she felt even more isolated.

  She had to pull herself together; it was no good sitting here getting miserable.

  She had one last surveillance report on Efraim to look through, and that was where she found her first concrete lead on what he was up to.

  The guys tailing Efraim had been quite creative. One of them had gone into Efraim’s hotel, up to the floor where he was staying, and stood outside his door, ready to pretend that he was lost if anyone asked what he was doing. He had wanted to know if Efraim was alone in the room. According to the report, he hadn’t heard a sound from inside. He did, however, made a discovery. Someone had left Efraim a message. It was lying on the floor outside his door, out in the open so that anyone could read it. The agent had taken a photograph with his cell phone.

  It wasn’t actually correct to say that anyone could read it: the message was written in Hebrew, and as far as Eden knew, there weren’t many Hebrew speakers in Sweden.

  She, however, was an exception. It was an easy language; she had needed less than a year to master it. She read the short lines.

  I can see you

  all the time

  but you can’t see me.

  Strange, don’t you think?

  Indeed it was strange. Could it be a joke? Was it meant to be funny? She didn’t think so.

  She read the message again.

  This had nothing to do with any kind of intelligence work; she knew that. Agents and spies didn
’t leave each other such indiscreet notes. So it must be related to a private matter.

  I can see you.

  But you can’t see me.

  Eden didn’t understand, and it was clear that she wasn’t meant to. But she did understand one thing, and it bothered her.

  Säpo weren’t the only ones watching Efraim.

  Someone else was following every step he took.

  Alex and Fredrika didn’t waste any time but went straight from the Eisenbergs’ to the Goldmanns’. They left the car where it was; the very thought of starting it up and driving through the narrow streets of Östermalm in the heavy snowfall raised Alex’s blood pressure.

  The Warrior and the Paper Boy.

  From what they had learned about both boys so far, these seemed like pretty good descriptions. What bothered Alex was the fact that they had chosen the names themselves. The Warrior he could understand, but what ten-year-old kid would come up with the Paper Boy? Paper was weak, fragile. Easily torn apart. And Boy? Ten-year-olds weren’t usually keen on that word either.

  “Their aliases,” he said to Fredrika.

  “I was thinking about the same thing. Especially the Paper Boy. Why would he call himself that?”

  “I’ve no idea. We must remember to mention it to his parents, ask if it really should be taken literally or if there’s some reference we’ve missed.”

  They walked in silence through the snow. Why did it have to be so cold all the time? Alex increased his speed. Perhaps it wasn’t just the Paper Boy they should be puzzling over; the Warrior wasn’t necessarily the obvious choice for a boy in the fourth grade.

  When Alex’s children were little they had played football. Climbed trees. Played hide-and-seek and hopscotch. Built snow caves. Did kids still do that kind of thing? Or did they spend every waking hour in front of the computer?

  Alex hated it when men of his age started to sound like old farts. Nobody listened to old farts, not even Alex himself. But sometimes he caught himself thinking that certain things actually had been better in the past. He and Lena hadn’t even wanted to buy a video player for their children because they had thought it would make them stupid if they filled their heads with too much crap.