The Chosen

by Kristina Ohlsson

  “Maybe not. The only problem there is that his friend, who called himself the Warrior, was also found dead with a paper bag over his head. We have to be able to explain both deaths, not just one.”

  “True. The Paper Boy is supposed to refer to some Israeli myth that I’ve never heard of,” Alex said. “It could be that this myth has nothing whatsoever to do with the case, but I still want to know more.”

  He looked up with a wry smile.

  “Didn’t you say Spencer was going to Israel? We might have to give him a little job to do while he’s there.”

  Fredrika managed a smile in return.

  Spencer on a mission in the Promised Land. It was an entertaining but unimaginable concept.

  “Just joking,” Alex said.

  As if that wasn’t obvious. At that moment his cell phone rang. Fredrika ate a little more while he was on the phone, but she had lost her appetite. Inside she was in chaos after everything that had happened, while outside heavy snow was falling once more. And somewhere in between, in a no-man’s-land that she couldn’t even begin to define, she and Alex were supposed to take a murder investigation in the right direction.

  She chewed, swallowed.

  Alex ended the call.

  “That was the secretary at the Solomon school. She rang to tell me about a potted plant that was sent to them anonymously following Josephine’s death.”

  “And?”

  “It arrived in a paper bag with a face drawn on it.”

  The stairwell was in darkness. A door opened a couple of floors above, then the light came on. Footsteps on the stairs. Muted crying from one of the apartments. Efraim Kiel thought the child responsible was probably very young: the sound lacked any real strength. It was a long time since Efraim had been a parent, but the memory lingered.

  It had taken a while to shake off his Säpo shadows. This time it had been essential to ensure that they didn’t follow him; if they had, it would have caused big problems.

  Even bigger than the problems he already had.

  Efraim’s frustration was bordering on intolerable. Whoever had decided to start leaving him messages was starting to get careless. The note outside his hotel room had been nothing short of stupid. It wasn’t just that the person could easily have been spotted—it was almost as if he or she wanted to be caught.

  The tone of the messages was playful, but Efraim knew what they really meant. Someone was following him, and that wasn’t good. Particularly in view of the fact that the individual in question was calling himself the Paper Boy.

  He had gone to see Peder Rydh again, and that had got him thinking.

  Rydh had done his job at long last and looked for something that could be a calling card. He didn’t seem to understand the importance of what he had found.

  A paper bag with a face drawn on it.

  The discovery terrified Efraim.

  The plant and the bag had been sent to the Solomon Community after the schoolteacher had been shot but before the boys were found on the golf course. And that told Efraim everything he needed to know.

  Now he was almost sure he knew who had contacted him.

  Someone passed him on the stairs and continued down to the ground floor. He couldn’t stay there. He was running the risk of being noticed if he didn’t move soon.

  Why had he actually gone there? So that he would know where she lived in case he ever needed to get ahold of her in a hurry. He read the nameplate on the door one last time.

  “E. & M. Lundell.”

  Good. So this was where Eden had settled down with her husband and children. He looked at the lock; he would be surprised if it was easy to force, but on the other hand he didn’t think it would be impossible.

  He turned away and went back down the stairs. Personally he would have preferred to live a couple of floors higher up. Distance was good—in all directions. He left the building and cut across Sankt Eriksplan, heading toward Vasa Park.

  He never saw the woman standing at the bus stop on Torsgatan as he crossed the road. Nor did he notice when she started following him.

  A paper bag with a face drawn on it.

  Three victims shot with the same gun but on two different occasions.

  Fredrika Bergman couldn’t take her eyes off the bag in which the chrysanthemum had been delivered to the Solomon Community. It had been picked up from Östermalm by a patrol car and brought to HQ before being sent on to the National Forensics Lab for analysis.

  Alex had asked to see it first, and now they were standing in his office, staring at it.

  “What the hell are we missing here?” he said, his voice suffused with annoyance. “A paper bag. With eyes, a nose, and a mouth. What’s the message and who is it meant for?”

  Fredrika thought about the boys lying in the snow and the paper bags someone had pulled over their heads. At the time she had believed the bags were a nod to an as-yet-unidentified recipient, then she wondered if they could be the killer’s calling card. This new discovery strengthened that view.

  But there was something that didn’t fit.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” Alex said, his tone brusque, challenging.

  Fredrika took her time before she spoke. She looked closely at the bag: the large eyes, the pointed nose, the gaping mouth.

  She found the photographs of the bags that had been over the boys’ heads.

  She studied them in detail, then passed them to Alex.

  “Look,” she said.

  Alex stared at the photographs.

  “And now look at this,” she said, pointing to the bag from the school.

  Alex made the same comparison. He didn’t speak for a moment.

  “They’re different,” he said eventually.

  “I agree. The bags from Lovön are similar but not identical. The bag the plant was in . . .”

  She paused.

  “Look at the face. It’s much more aggressive. And drawn in different colors.”

  The eyes on this bag were colored blue. The noses were different, too: short lines on the original bags, considerably bigger on this one.

  “You think we’re looking for different perpetrators?” Alex said.

  The doubt in his voice told Fredrika that he didn’t share her point of view, if that was the case.

  “I don’t think we can rule it out,” she said.

  She sat down and went on:

  “First of all, our perpetrator shoots a woman outside the Solomon school. He does so while lying on his stomach on a rooftop on the opposite side of the street. By the time the police arrive, he has managed to get off the roof and leave the building without anyone seeing him. But he doesn’t stop there. Instead he gets in a car an hour later and picks up Simon and Abraham. Keeps them overnight and shoots them the following morning.”

  Alex was still holding the paper bag. The gloves he was wearing covered the scars on his hands from the time when he saved the child from burning to death.

  Fredrika looked away. She didn’t want to think about children being burned or hurt in any other way.

  “Does that sound reasonable to you?” she said. “The idea that the same person did all that?”

  “What evidence do we have to suggest that there’s more than one perpetrator? Concrete evidence, I mean.”

  Fredrika took a deep breath.

  “None at all.”

  “We need to inform the National Crime Unit,” Alex said. “As I said before, we’ll continue to investigate the two crimes separately, but I’m afraid we have to accept what the evidence is telling us: there is only one perpetrator.”

  He put down the bag. “Okay?”

  Fredrika nodded. The days when she and Alex stood in opposite corners, fighting over which direction the investigation should take, were long gone. The team was too small now; she couldn’t afford to fly solo anymore.

  The Soloist.

  That was what Spencer had called her when they first got to know one another almost twenty years ago. When their love
was secret, her desire overwhelming. She had loved him so much back then. She still did. They had both been worried about how they would cope with ordinary everyday life together, but on the whole it had gone unexpectedly well.

  The weekend loomed before her like an iceberg. In only two days’ time Spencer would be leaving for Jerusalem. Fredrika had spoken to her mother, who had promised to help out with the children.

  She straightened up. Wished she were somewhere else, perhaps with the orchestra. The violin made her feel safe; her job didn’t. Not the way things were right now.

  Playing the violin was pure enjoyment.

  Dead children were about as far from enjoyment as you could possibly get.

  • • •

  As Fredrika was on her way out of Alex’s office, a thought suddenly struck him.

  “Why did the secretary react to the way the bag looked?” he said.

  Fredrika turned back.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We haven’t said a word to the press about the bags we found over the boys’ heads. So why did she think it was worth mentioning that someone had drawn on this bag?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Fredrika said. “You were the one who spoke to her.”

  Alex picked up his phone and called the school.

  “What was it about that paper bag that made you call the police?” he said. “Why did you think it would be of interest in our inquiries?”

  The secretary sounded surprised.

  “I didn’t, to be honest.”

  Now it was Alex’s turn to be surprised.

  “So why did you call?”

  “It wasn’t my idea. Our new head of security suggested it. Peder Rydh.”

  Alex thought fast, trying to understand.

  “You showed the bag to Peder first?”

  “No, he found it himself. He came and asked me if we’d received anything odd after Josephine and the boys were murdered, and then he started looking at the wrapping that the plants and flowers had come in. Why he thought a paper bag would be of interest to the police, I have no idea.”

  Nor did Alex. And that bothered him.

  Had Peder known what he was looking for among the wrapping? And if so, who was feeding him the information?

  The discovery should have pleased him. He had found a significant clue; both Efraim Kiel and the police had confirmed that. If Alex hadn’t thought the paper bag was interesting, he wouldn’t have had it picked up so quickly.

  The only problem was that no one had told Peder Rydh why the bag was so bloody important. In fact, he felt really stupid. He had reacted when he saw the bag in Reception—thought it looked different from all the rest and wondered why. But would he have noticed it if Efraim Kiel hadn’t talked about calling cards? He wasn’t so sure.

  The question now was how much he should tell Alex and Fredrika. Without anyone actually putting it into words, he had realized that Efraim Kiel was no ordinary security expert. Apparently he had traveled all the way from Israel to assist the Solomon Community to recruit a new head of security; that said something about his background and even more about the importance the community attached to appointing the right man.

  Therefore, Peder was anxious not to disappoint them; he didn’t want to go behind their backs.

  Alex and Fredrika took him by surprise; they turned up in his office without warning, wanting to talk about the paper bag with the face on it.

  For some reason this made Peder nervous, which annoyed him. He offered them coffee, and when they said yes, he felt like some kind of lackey who was obliged to serve them. He didn’t have an assistant.

  “I spoke to the secretary who called about the bag,” Alex said, taking a sip of his coffee. “She said you were the one who found it.”

  Peder stiffened.

  “I didn’t ‘find’ it. It was lying on the floor under her desk, along with a load of other bags and wrapping paper.”

  “But it was you who said she ought to show it to the police, wasn’t it?”

  There was nothing aggressive in Alex’s tone; he was just asking. And yet Peder couldn’t help feeling slightly uncomfortable. Where was Alex going with this?

  “It stood out, made me wonder if it might be significant. And there was no card to say who had sent the chrysanthemum.”

  “Was that the only anonymous delivery?” Fredrika asked.

  “No, there were several, but the vast majority came with a card.”

  Alex put down his cup.

  “But this one came after Josephine was shot? Before it became known that the boys had also been murdered?”

  “If I’ve understood correctly, that’s what the secretary said.”

  Alex leaned back in his chair; Peder unconsciously did the same. An air of tension was building in the room, and he didn’t like it.

  He didn’t like it at all.

  “Peder, how did you know that this bag would be of interest to us?”

  The question came from Fredrika. Simple and direct, as her questions usually were. Impossible to misunderstand but sometimes difficult to answer.

  “I didn’t know.”

  Which was true.

  “But I thought it might be, because it was different from all the other bags. Because there was something about that face—”

  He broke off.

  Alex looked curious.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t fucking know. I mean, it wasn’t exactly an attractive face. If it had looked as if a child had drawn it, I might have thought the plant had come from one of Josephine’s pupils, but that face seemed so . . . adult, somehow. As if an adult had drawn it, I mean. Combined with the fact that there was no card . . . well, that’s why I reacted the way I did.”

  Alex drank a little more coffee, then looked Peder straight in the eye.

  “I sincerely hope that you’re absolutely clear about why we’re here,” he said, stressing every word. “You guessed correctly. That bag is extremely important to us. That’s why we’re wondering if you really did come across it by pure chance.”

  Peder’s pulse rate increased. He couldn’t stop himself: he had to ask more questions.

  “Have there been more anonymous deliveries in bags with faces drawn on them?” he said.

  Alex looked surprised for a second.

  “No. No, not as far as we know.”

  “So why is it interesting?”

  Neither Alex nor Fredrika answered, and there was an uncomfortable silence.

  “It’s too early to talk about it right now,” Alex said eventually. “But I promise I’ll tell you as soon as I can.”

  Peder couldn’t help feeling put out. He knew that Alex was right; he couldn’t tell Peder why the bag was significant at this stage. But it still hurt to know that he was an outsider, that he couldn’t be a part of police work anymore. Of Alex’s work.

  His thoughts turned to Efraim Kiel. The man who hadn’t gone back to Israel in spite of the fact that his job was done. The man who had come to see Peder, talking of calling cards.

  Peder’s brain was working overtime. Alex said there had been no other deliveries in similar bags, and yet the bag was important. Very important, in fact. In which case Efraim must have been right. There had been other calling cards.

  But how had Efraim known that?

  Did he have his own contacts within the police?

  “I can see you’re mulling something over,” Alex said in a pleasant tone of voice.

  Fredrika crossed her legs.

  “You’re not suspected of any crime, Peder. We’re just very curious about what made you go to see the school secretary and ask her those particular questions.”

  When Peder didn’t reply, Alex took over.

  “Another reason for our curiosity is that you also called a former colleague in the National Crime Unit and asked if they had found some object the killer might have left behind after Josephine was shot. I think you referred to it as a calling card.”

  Peder felt himself blushin
g.

  Fuck.

  So his colleague had contacted Alex and told him that Peder had been in touch. Marvelous.

  Alex realized what he was thinking.

  “He mentioned it to me when I called to tell him about the paper bag you found. Since the NCU are still technically leading the investigation into Josephine’s death, we have to pass on any information that could be relevant.”

  Peder felt a spurt of anger.

  “That’s bloody ridiculous,” he said. “Splitting the investigations. Surely it’s obvious it’s the same killer! All the victims are Jewish, they all belong to the same community, they all have links to the same school.”

  He fell silent.

  “And they were shot with the same gun,” Alex said.

  Peder blinked.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, but keep it to yourself. It seems to have been leaked to the press already, because they’re asking questions, but we haven’t confirmed it yet.”

  “But it’s definitely true? They were shot with the same gun?”

  “Yes.”

  So he’d been right.

  “Now, tell us what you know,” Alex said, and this time his tone had changed. “Why did you think the person who shot Josephine might have deliberately left something behind?”

  Peder swallowed; he couldn’t help feeling that he shouldn’t mention Efraim Kiel to the police, but at the same time he kept wondering what Efraim was hiding. He was the one who had started talking about calling cards; had he just been fishing, or did he know something?

  Hesitantly he began to speak.

  “There’s a man in the Solomon Community—well, not really in the community; he’s come over from Israel to help with the appointment of the head of security. His name is Efraim Kiel.”

  “I’ve spoken to him,” Alex said. “He called me to ask for a reference.”

  Good—in that case Alex already knew who he was.

  “Exactly,” Peder went on. “He came to see me yesterday and asked if I had any information about the police investigation into the murders. He was very keen to know what was going on, and he was particularly interested in whether the killer had left some kind of calling card at either of the crime scenes.”

  Alex and Fredrika looked at one another.