The Chosen

by Kristina Ohlsson

  “Hello?”

  Carmen stood up and followed her husband into the hallway. Gideon came back into the living room, still holding the phone.

  “Has something happened?” Carmen asked from behind him.

  The telephone fell out of Gideon’s hand and crashed to the floor.

  “They can’t find Polly.”

  The afternoon sky lay dark and heavy over Stockholm. The sun had made its guest appearance and didn’t seem to have any plans to return. At least, not according to the weather forecast.

  “It looks as if you’ll be able to get away to England tonight, but who knows when you’ll be home,” Mikael said.

  He was lying on his stomach on the bed, checking the weather on his laptop. Eden was busy packing.

  “I always manage to get home,” she said.

  Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. The tremor was only slight, but she was afraid Mikael might notice. She would rather say she had developed an acute form of Parkinson’s disease than tell him the real reason for her anxiety.

  I met the biological father of my children today. I’ve met him before, of course. But never with the girls.

  She knew he had realized. It had been written all over his face. Ironically, that was what it took for the brilliant Mossad agent to lose his composure.

  The children’s voices filled the entire apartment. They were playing with an old dollhouse their grandmother had given them. Fear squeezed Eden’s heart. Was it safe to leave them with Mikael? Who knew what Efraim Kiel might do, now that he knew what she had never meant him to find out?

  Eden realized she was more frightened of how Efraim would react than of what Mikael would do if he ever found out that he wasn’t the father of the girls he had brought up.

  No words would suffice if Mikael learned the truth. Right at the beginning, when she was pregnant and then when the girls had just been born, she had thought about telling him. Saying those terrible words.

  I deceived and betrayed you. And I got pregnant. But he doesn’t exist anymore, the other man. For me there is only you.

  But not one syllable had passed her lips.

  She remembered so clearly why she had first fallen for Efraim. Her whole life had been nothing but crap. She had just had a miscarriage and Mikael had blamed her, saying that if she hadn’t been working so hard, if she had taken better care of herself, she would never have lost the baby.

  His words had devastated her, because the doctor told her something different. She would have lost the child anyway. It was a miracle that she had gotten pregnant in the first place; medically speaking, she was virtually sterile.

  That afternoon she went home to Mikael and said that she couldn’t see a future for them as a couple. He pleaded with her, begged for forgiveness. Eden turned her back on him, left him in limbo. Two days later she met Efraim at a conference organized by the London School of Economics. He introduced himself as a researcher from the University of Tel Aviv, and she believed that their meeting was pure chance, just like a fairy tale. At the end of the second day she went back to his hotel room and stayed there until well after midnight.

  That was the start of their affair.

  It was cheap and passionate. And just a bit of fun. She stayed with Mikael, but their relationship was broken, and she didn’t know how they were ever going to be able to fix it.

  As a researcher, it was easy for Efraim to find reasons to visit London on a regular basis, and eventually he was there more or less all the time. In hindsight Eden realized that she had never once visited him at his place of work. Of course not: he didn’t have one.

  The most important thing about the affair as far as Eden was concerned was that every time she went to bed with Efraim, it felt like a kind of revenge for the fact that Mikael had blamed her for the miscarriage.

  So unbelievably petty.

  The memory made her want to throw up. Just once she and Efraim failed to use protection; Eden couldn’t have cared less. The only thing she was afraid of was an unwanted pregnancy, but according to the doctors that was the last thing she needed to worry about. She had told Efraim she was already pregnant. She didn’t know why, but afterward it had been impossible to retract her words.

  And Efraim had said that the fact she was pregnant was irrelevant, because after all, their relationship was just a bit of fun.

  I hope you feel the same, Eden.

  Both Mikael and the doctor had been wrong. She could get pregnant, and she could carry the child to full term. When she realized she was expecting, it struck her that she couldn’t actually be sure who the father was, but she convinced herself that it wouldn’t matter. Efraim obviously didn’t care about her, and becoming a father was what Mikael wanted most in the world. Infidelity was the catalyst Eden needed to fix her marriage. When her relationship with Efraim ebbed away, she tried to tell herself that she didn’t miss him; Efraim had fulfilled his role in her life.

  Until the day the girls were born.

  Seeing them for the first time was utterly terrifying.

  Because Eden knew immediately.

  She had given birth not to Mikael’s children but to Efraim’s.

  “Are you okay?”

  Mikael sounded worried.

  “I’m fine.”

  She forced herself to smile. Finished her packing and closed her suitcase.

  She had survived for this long; she wasn’t about to let Efraim win just by standing in silence in a snow-covered park on a winter’s day.

  If only he hadn’t come back. If only he’d left things the way they were.

  Because it was in the second round that he had knocked her out.

  The realization of what she had done—gone through an entire pregnancy imagining that it didn’t matter who the father of her children was—had eaten away at her soul. For a while the idea of leaving Mikael to be with Efraim had seemed like the ideal solution.

  It had been close.

  So very close.

  Eden had often thanked her lucky stars that she had never told him that the twins were his. He knew of their existence, and she let him believe they were Mikael’s. That was the only thing that saved her when everything went to hell in a handbasket.

  She still had a place to retreat to. A place where she had remained ever since; a place where she loved to be.

  With Mikael and the girls.

  She dropped the case on the floor with a thud, then climbed onto the bed and lay down next to Mikael. He closed the laptop and put his arm around her. Stroked her back.

  Efraim could go to hell. Compared to Mikael, he was a big fat ice-cold zero.

  “I was thinking,” Mikael said. “As you’re going to be in London anyway, would you have time to stop by that music shop where I always used to go?”

  “You mean the one you used to go to back in the good old days, when you thought you could play the guitar?”

  “That’s the one. I thought maybe you could get Dani a violin for her birthday.”

  Eden stiffened involuntarily. Mikael had got it into his head that Dani was a gifted musician, and he wanted her to learn to play an instrument using the Suzuki method. The violin was Dani’s own idea.

  “I’ll have to see,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll have much time for shopping.”

  At that moment Alex Recht called, saving her from a much longer discussion.

  “Another child has gone missing,” he said.

  “You know I can’t help you with that.”

  Another child? But why?

  “I realize that. I wanted to check if you’ve found out any more about Efraim Kiel.”

  “Not yet. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I’m beginning to suspect that he’s somehow involved in all this.”

  Emotions and vague assumptions had no place in a serious police inquiry. Alex Recht had learned that the hard way. His early years on the force had been marked by the odd case of misjudgment, errors that had eventually made him the skilled investigator he was today. />
  Efraim Kiel.

  He wasn’t at the hotel where he had said he was staying; he couldn’t be reached on the number he had given. Most importantly, he knew the parents of one of the murdered boys. That was one step too far.

  He had called Peder Rydh the previous day, asking questions and digging for information.

  Strange guy.

  Alex had asked Peder to check whether Efraim still had obligations to fulfill within the Solomon Community, which might explain why he hadn’t left the country. But according to Peder, the general secretary had been very surprised to hear that Kiel was still in Sweden. He had done what he came to do, and the general secretary hadn’t spoken to him since Peder took up his post.

  So there was definitely something odd going on.

  Alex was at Police HQ. Fredrika had gone home to pack for her trip to Israel; they had decided that she would be away for only two days. She was needed in Stockholm. The corridor outside his office had been silent and deserted in the morning, but since it became clear that another child had gone missing, there had been a constant flurry of activity.

  Polly Eisenberg.

  Alex looked at the photograph supplied by her parents. Would she meet the same fate as her brother?

  Carmen and Gideon Eisenberg seemed to have no idea why this was happening to them. However hard Alex pushed, they were unable to supply him with any useful information.

  He had lost his patience. Seen through their shock and despair, and the fear at the thought of losing their youngest child, too.

  “You’re lying!” he had roared in a voice he very rarely used. “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that you don’t know why someone is abducting and killing your children!”

  His words had produced sheer hysteria. Polly wasn’t dead yet—or was she?

  Was she?

  Alex thought about the sun shining on freshly fallen snow earlier in the day and wondered if Polly, like her brother, was lying in a cold grave somewhere. The thought was unbearable. No more children must be allowed to die. It was out of the question.

  Polly’s disappearance had led to a change of plan. The Goldmanns were on their way to Police HQ to answer the same questions Alex and Fredrika had put to the Eisenbergs. Alex intended to show them the photographs of the boys with paper bags over their heads and find out what they knew about the Lion. If they had any sense, they wouldn’t choose to remain silent as their friends had done.

  But they weren’t friends, were they? Just four people whose paths had crossed more times than Alex could count. In their childhood and their youth. In the army. At university. Through the move to Sweden and through their sons.

  And now through the fact that their sons had been murdered by the same killer.

  An investigator temporarily assigned to Alex’s team tapped on his door.

  “The Goldmanns are here. Do you want anyone to sit in on the interview?”

  “No, but I would like to question them separately. Could you take care of Daphne if I start with Saul?”

  “No problem.” His colleague’s expression darkened. “How long has Polly Eisenberg been missing now?”

  “Just under two hours.”

  When she was formally reported missing, she had been gone for less than thirty minutes. Under normal circumstances the police would have first checked to make sure that she hadn’t wandered off to the nearest sweet shop or something along those lines, but not this time. Not when her brother had been murdered so recently and there was reason to believe that Polly might also be at risk.

  The police had thrown a ring of steel around Stockholm, and roadblocks were also set up outside the city. The media quickly ran the story as headline news, and the switchboard was inundated with calls from journalists demanding answers that Alex just didn’t have.

  “The parents,” his colleague said. “Do they have an alibi?”

  “Obviously the Eisenbergs do, because they were talking to me and Fredrika when Polly disappeared. I don’t know about the Goldmanns yet.”

  It was always the same when the situation was serious: they knew too little, had too many unanswered questions. Alex thought about the different impressions in the snow, on the roof, and on Lovön. Small shoes and big shoes. On the same feet? The same gun had been used both times, after all.

  He picked up his notes, took the elevator down to the basement, and walked into the interview room where Saul Goldmann was waiting. Daphne would be questioned up on the ground floor in a room with both curtains and a view, but not Saul. Alex wanted him to realize the gravity of the situation. Saul had given the impression of being quite cocky the last time they met; on this occasion Alex was determined to make sure he had the upper hand.

  “Thank you for taking the time to come in.”

  Saul Goldmann looked exhausted. A man who had lost too much in such a short period of time.

  “No problem,” he said. “Needless to say we will do all we can to help you.”

  But his eyes told a different story. His expression was wary, bordering on hostile.

  Alex understood, to a certain extent. The last time they met, Saul had been on home turf, secure in his role as a victim. After the meeting with Carmen and Gideon, Alex was determined not to make the same mistake again. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel sorry for the parents, because he did. Immensely sorry. But as long as he was convinced they were withholding information, he had to be hard on them. He was the one who decided what the police needed to know in order to do their job—not the Eisenbergs or the Goldmanns.

  He began with the most important question.

  “Where were you between one and two p.m. today?”

  For a moment Alex thought he had misjudged the situation and that Saul Goldmann was about to attack him. The other man was much more disturbed by the question than Alex had expected him to be.

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “I mean exactly what I say and nothing else. Please answer the question.”

  “Am I suspected of some crime? Do you think I’ve taken Polly? Is that why I’m here?”

  Alex slowly put down his pen.

  “In less than a week, three children have gone missing from the Solomon Community here in Stockholm. Two of them have been found dead. One of them was your son. It’s my duty to find out what their close family and friends were doing when those children disappeared. Because however much I wish it wasn’t the case, the perpetrator is usually someone known to the child. So answer the damn question!”

  Adults who feel under pressure often start to behave like children. Alex had seen the phenomenon many times, yet he was still surprised when he saw Saul’s reaction. The man’s eyes shone with defiance.

  What was it that he found so infuriating?

  “I was out for a walk. A circuit around Djurgården.”

  The most classic of all walks in Stockholm.

  “With Daphne?”

  “Alone.”

  “Did you meet anyone you knew while you were out walking?”

  “No.”

  “Did you make or receive any phone calls?”

  “No.”

  So he had no alibi.

  That was why he was so angry. Because he was afraid. Afraid of looking like a suspect.

  “I’ve just lost my only child. I needed to be alone. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Alex moved on; he didn’t want to waste time on the issue of Saul’s alibi at this stage, so he pretended to let it go. It was clear that Saul was surprised. Alex sat calmly opposite him, waiting.

  Eventually Saul broke the silence.

  “So is there anything else?”

  Alex glanced at his watch. Wished the time weren’t going so fast. Not just for his own sake but mainly for Polly Eisenberg’s. Because in spite of all the roadblocks, all the officers who had been called in to work overtime—in spite of the fact that every media outlet in the country was following Polly’s disappearance—Alex had the horrible feeling that he was in the
middle of a chain of events over which he had no influence whatsoever.

  The chances of finding Polly alive weren’t just small; they were infinitesimal.

  And sitting opposite Alex was a man who, like certain others, had chosen not to tell the police everything he knew.

  A man who didn’t have an alibi.

  That wasn’t enough to make him a suspect, of course. They had to understand the motive in order to find the perpetrator.

  “Yes,” he said to Saul. “There is something else. I have several more questions. Let’s start with something that should be comparatively simple. Do you know a man by the name of Efraim Kiel?”

  In the world of fairy tales, limitations were set only by the bounds of the imagination, which appealed to Fredrika Bergman. The impossible became possible; the happy ending was obligatory. And as a reader she always had the option of setting the book aside if the story got too unpleasant.

  Which was what her daughter did when Fredrika tried to read to her.

  “Yuck,” she said, knocking the book out of her mother’s hands.

  Fredrika picked it up and looked at the dark images. Saga was right: it was a dark and scary story, not the kind of thing she should be reading to a child who was only three.

  Her thoughts turned to the tale of the Paper Boy. The story Gideon had grown up with, told with the aim of keeping the children at home in the evenings. In a country like Israel, there was probably good reason to frighten a child in that way. The problem was that the Paper Boy seemed to have come to life—but not in Israel: in Stockholm.

  Fredrika had searched online, but no one seemed to have heard of him. Nothing had been written about him. Perhaps her lack of success was due to her inability to read Hebrew; her searches in English and Swedish got her nowhere.

  But something told Fredrika that even if she had been able to speak Hebrew, she wouldn’t have gotten many hits. Carmen had heard of the Paper Boy through Gideon when she was an adult; he hadn’t featured in her childhood.

  The Paper Boy.

  Fredrika shuddered. The very concept was too abstract to stimulate the imagination. Why Boy and not Man? The Paper Man would be more logical. Using a child to frighten a child was tasteless and surely ineffective: Who would be scared of someone called the Paper Boy?