The Chosen

by Kristina Ohlsson

  Me. I was scared of everything when I was little.

  Fredrika gazed at her daughter, who had already forgotten about the story and was playing with a car instead. A blue car that Spencer had bought for their son. In his rather conservative view of the world, little girls couldn’t possibly be interested in such things. She laughed quietly to herself. Spencer was a good man, in spite of his shortcomings. Almost perfect. And he was perfectly capable of backing down when he was wrong. If his daughter wanted to play with cars, that was fine.

  Beyond the fairy stories and the fun lay her trip to Israel. Without Spencer. He wasn’t up to it; that was obvious. She hated the thought of traveling alone, even though it was only for a couple of days.

  She tried to shake off her feeling of unease. What could go wrong in such a short time?

  Everything. The cataclysmic changes don’t happen over a long period but from one second to the next.

  The sound of her cell phone interrupted her thoughts.

  “Could we meet up before you go?” Alex said.

  Fredrika didn’t like the idea at all; she really didn’t want to leave her family again at this stage.

  Alex picked up on her reluctance.

  “I can come to you if that’s easier.”

  Fredrika was taken aback.

  “Come here? To the apartment?”

  “It was just a suggestion.”

  Why not?

  “Of course,” she heard herself saying. “Good idea.”

  • • •

  Spencer opened the door to Alex a little while later. Fredrika heard them say hello, saw them shake hands. She had to smile as she watched Alex trying to hide his surprise. Just like everyone else, he knew that she lived with a man who was twenty-five years older than she was, but he still seemed bemused by how old Spencer actually was. Which was the way most people reacted when they first met him.

  Alex glanced over at her, seemingly at a loss. He was acting as if someone had forced him across the threshold at gunpoint rather than as if the whole thing had been his idea in the first place.

  The children realized someone had arrived and came running.

  Like eager little puppies. They certainly weren’t shy.

  “Coffee?”

  Alex declined. Fredrika led him into the library and closed the door.

  “Okay, you two, shall we start making dinner?” she heard Spencer say to the children. His voice was hoarse; he definitely wasn’t well.

  “He seems nice,” Alex said, mainly for the sake of having something to say.

  “He is,” Fredrika said. “And good-looking.”

  Nothing was as liberating as humor.

  Alex laughed uncertainly.

  “Are you on the same flight tomorrow?” he asked.

  Fredrika looked downcast.

  “Spencer’s not coming,” she said. “He isn’t well enough.”

  “But you’re still going?” Alex asked anxiously.

  “I am.”

  He looked relieved.

  “We’ve questioned Saul and Daphne Goldmann,” he said with an air of resignation. “I wish I had some useful information to pass on, but unfortunately that’s not the case. To start with, they had nothing to add to the story of the Paper Boy; they merely confirmed what Gideon and Carmen had told us: that it was used to frighten children.”

  “Saul grew up on the same kibbutz as Gideon,” Fredrika said, “so it’s hardly surprising that he’s heard of the Paper Boy, too. But what about Daphne? Was she already familiar with the story?”

  “She was, but that’s not surprising either: she grew up on the neighboring kibbutz.”

  Fredrika made a mental note of that snippet.

  “Do we have the names of these kibbutzim? I’m just wondering whether I ought to try and visit them.”

  “I think you should—if they’re still there, that is. Quite a lot have gone bankrupt or closed down for other reasons.”

  Time had moved on from the basic premise of the kibbutz, an idealistic society where everything was owned collectively and no one earned more than anyone else, even though some carried more responsibility than others.

  Alex went on:

  “Then they were asked about the Lion. Same again: they had nothing to add to what we had already heard from Gideon and Carmen.”

  Fredrika thought about the prospects of finding the Lion in Israel; after all, it was from Jerusalem that his emails had been sent.

  “Have you spoken to the Israeli police?” she asked.

  Alex nodded. “We’ve given them everything our tech guys have found out about the Lion and they’re going to help us search for him. They should have done a fair amount by the time you get there.”

  “So we’ve made a formal request for assistance?”

  “Sweden doesn’t actually have an international agreement with Israel, but since the victims belonged to the Solomon Community, it wasn’t particularly difficult to persuade them to cooperate with us. I don’t think we’d be able to secure an extradition to Sweden, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “How did Daphne and Saul react to the photograph of Abraham with the paper bag over his head?”

  “Like the Eisenbergs, but even more strongly. Particularly Saul: he was very vocal.”

  There was nothing strange about that. The pictures were terrible. Fredrika could still see the boys lying there on their backs in the snow, barefoot, each with a bullet wound in his chest. And a paper bag over his head.

  “And still the parents seem unable to help us move forward,” she said.

  “They insist they have no idea why this is happening to them, but I’m not sure they’re telling the truth. Now that Polly Eisenberg has gone missing, too, I’m more convinced than ever that chance has nothing to do with any of this.”

  “Of course not. It’s obvious that there’s a personal motive behind the murders and Polly’s disappearance; the only question is what that motive might be.”

  Fredrika thought about the Paper Boy once more, wondering who the perpetrator was. The Paper Boy seemed like a suspect, an evil fairy-tale figure who didn’t exist.

  Except that he did exist, because the children who had died on Lovön had been marked in the way that the Paper Boy marked his victims, according to the legend.

  “I’ve spoken to the tech guys about whether it would be possible to trace the Lion’s other contacts,” Alex said. “They’ve spoken to the administrators of Super Troopers, and it turns out that the information was still on the system in spite of the fact that the Lion had deleted his profile.”

  Fredrika felt a flicker of hope.

  “And you’re only telling me this now?”

  Alex pulled a face.

  “It was another dead end, I’m afraid. The Lion had no contact with any of the other members.”

  Fredrika’s mind was whirling. She didn’t regard that as a dead end at all.

  “Which means he was only interested in Simon and Abraham. But how did he know he would find them on Super Troopers?”

  “That’s a damn good question. Maybe someone tipped him off?”

  Maybe, maybe not. So many questions, so few answers. What a mess. Fredrika tried another tack.

  “We wondered if the Lion could be the person who picked up the boys. Did we follow up on the car rental idea?”

  “Inasmuch as we don’t have a name to go on, I haven’t set the ball rolling yet,” Alex said.

  “Didn’t the Lion say his first name was Zalman?”

  “Yes, but that’s not necessarily true. But you’re right: we’ll check it out. He could have two sets of ID papers.”

  Could he? Fredrika thought about Efraim Kiel, an Israeli security expert who had entered Sweden and now couldn’t be found. Alex had probably been wise to contact Eden; the police lacked the tools to identify their suspects, which said something about their background. Something very unpleasant.

  “Did the Goldmanns know who Efraim Kiel was?”

&nb
sp; “They knew him from their military service, but that’s all.”

  Alex ran a hand over his chin. “I have a feeling the parents are hiding a lot of things from us, but I don’t understand why. It’s so damn frustrating.”

  People lied for the strangest reasons. Fredrika knew that. A groundless fear of becoming a suspect was often the main motivation; they got themselves entangled in all kinds of unnecessary lies in order to make life simpler, which had the opposite effect. Always and without exception.

  Alex met Fredrika’s gaze.

  “I’m not saying that I expect you to achieve miracles during your trip, but almost . . . Are you sure you can cope with all this?”

  “I can cope.”

  She looked at her watch, working out how long Polly had been missing. Her heart sank as she thought the unthinkable: they weren’t going to find her in time. Not if she had been taken by the same person who had abducted her brother.

  Arlanda was a quiet place on a Saturday evening. Eden Lundell loved airports. She was fascinated by the stream of people who had something in common: they were all heading to or from somewhere.

  And the sense of being in the midst of that stream usually brought her a feeling of peace.

  However, peace was sadly lacking as Eden sat waiting for her flight to London. Stress crawled under her skin, making it impossible for her to sit still.

  I shouldn’t have left Mikael and the children alone.

  In many families it was the man who was the hunter-gatherer, who protected his family, and who took on the physical responsibility. But not in Eden’s case. From a purely physical point of view, Mikael was the perfect warrior; Eden had no doubt that he would give up his life for her and their daughters. The only problem was that death was rarely a particularly productive option. It was noble but not very sensible. If Mikael chose that option, both he and the children would be gone in two seconds.

  The thought made her feel sick. She dug out her phone and called home.

  “Has something happened?” Mikael said anxiously, highlighting the fact that Eden didn’t usually do that kind of thing.

  “I just wanted to check on you,” she said.

  “You left forty minutes ago.”

  “Talk to you soon.”

  She ended the call, cursing herself. She never got nervous. There was no room for weakness. And fear was the greatest weakness of all.

  Eden realized she was watching the people around her, scanning her surroundings like radar, alert for the slightest deviation from the norm.

  Efraim. What would she do if he sought her out again?

  Because his appearance in the park had been anything but a chance encounter. He wanted something.

  He’s deliberately stressing me out. Provoking me. I just don’t understand why.

  Alex Recht thought that Efraim might have something to do with the murder of the two boys and that he had taken another child.

  But Alex didn’t know that Säpo had been watching Efraim, shadowing his movements outside the hotel—at least insofar as he was willing to be shadowed.

  Where the hell had Säpo been when he turned up in the park?

  Eden had realized something then: she would never be free of Efraim. Not unless that was what he wanted. She thought about the gaps in the surveillance reports, the fact that Efraim appeared to be spending way too many hours in his hotel room. They had changed their approach after Eden had pointed out the failings in their routine; they had located alternative exits from the hotel, which were now covered.

  But Eden knew that wasn’t enough. His appearance in the park proved her point.

  A catastrophic incident. Thinking about it caused her physical pain.

  Her cell phone rang. It was GD.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” he said.

  “So have I.”

  She hadn’t got around to telling her boss about what had happened earlier. She felt a surge of pure rage. If the surveillance operatives hadn’t been such amateurs, Efraim would never have been able to get so close to her. God only knew what he had been up to during all those missing hours.

  She thought about the two boys lying in the snow with paper bags over their heads.

  She pushed the suspicion aside; it was impossible.

  Surely the man who was the father of her children couldn’t have murdered someone else’s sons?

  “You first,” Buster said.

  Eden gave a brief outline of Efraim’s appearance in the park, but she omitted the worst part of all: the fact that Efraim had seen Dani and realized what she hadn’t told him before they broke up. Eden’s silent revenge, her darkest secret.

  Buster didn’t say a word.

  “Are you still there?” Eden said.

  “I am. So the bastard came and found you? In the park, when you were with your family?”

  Technically, some of them are his family.

  “Yes. So it’s obvious that the surveillance just isn’t working.”

  Don’t sound angry; don’t flare up. It was so easy to ignore people who flew off the handle.

  “Which is exactly why I called,” Buster said. “Because something has gone terribly wrong with our surveillance. I rang to warn you, Eden. I’m very sorry that it was too late.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They haven’t seen him since yesterday. Eventually they went into the hotel and spoke to the receptionist. He’d checked out.”

  “So now we have no idea where he is?”

  “Correct.”

  She forced herself to breathe calmly.

  “Have they seen anything of the person who’s leaving him messages?”

  “Not yet.”

  Not yet. As if they had all the time in the world.

  “Alex Recht has been in touch again,” she said. “They seem to think that Efraim might be involved in the murders of those two children from the Solomon Community.”

  “Shit.”

  Buster’s voice was a stress-filled exhalation.

  “The question is whether we can provide him with an alibi,” Eden said. “Although that seems unlikely, under the circumstances.”

  “But why are they interested in Kiel?” Buster wanted to know.

  Eden passed on what Alex had told her. The police had nothing concrete to go on, but their suspicions were growing, and the fact that he was so difficult to get hold of didn’t exactly help his case.

  “It definitely sounds as if we ought to tell them that we’re following him, too,” Buster said. “Where are you, by the way?”

  “Arlanda.”

  “Eden, please don’t do anything stupid. Where are you going?”

  “I’ll tell you when it’s over.”

  “No, you fucking won’t. You’ll tell me right—”

  “I’ll be away on Monday, but I should be back on Tuesday.”

  “Just so you know: I can’t support you if you’re running your own show. I want to make that perfectly clear.”

  Behind Eden, on the other side of the huge windows, the illuminated runways sparkled with frost and snow. She would soon be on her way.

  “You can’t help me with this, Buster.”

  “How do you know? You won’t even let me try.”

  “You have tried. Efraim ended up following me and my children to the toboggan run.”

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about that.”

  “I know. But it’s not enough. Säpo can’t access the information we need. Only I can do that, on my own.”

  A plane taxied past the window, its white metallic bulk moving slowly toward the runway.

  Eden’s flight was called; it was time to board.

  “I have to go.”

  “Will you call Alex Recht, or shall I ask someone else to do it?”

  Eden thought for a second.

  “I’ll speak to him when I land.”

  She was about to end the call, but Buster hadn’t finished.

  “Be honest with me, Eden. Just between the two o
f us. Do you think Efraim Kiel is involved in the murders?”

  She stopped.

  Pictured him. Tall, dark, and tanned. Hand in hand at a market in Jerusalem. Whispering in her ear, telling her how much he loved her.

  The most treacherous, lying bastard she had ever met in her entire life.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  And found to her horror that she meant what she said.

  She didn’t know what she thought about the question of Efraim Kiel’s guilt.

  As long as she had any doubt on that issue, she couldn’t be sure that her family was safe.

  Up on deck the air was cold and damp. The wind seared his cheeks, brought tears to his eyes. Efraim Kiel stood alone at the rail, watching the dark water foam against the metal hull. It was ten o’clock at night. The following morning they would be in Helsinki; he would fly back to Stockholm before lunch. Good.

  He thought about the latest message from the Paper Boy and realized someone had been watching him. And he hadn’t noticed.

  Although it wasn’t the fact of being followed that bothered him the most. Much more critical was the question of what would happen when the Paper Boy discovered that the next victim had disappeared. Would he choose someone else or let it lie?

  Efraim knew better than to count on the latter.

  The Paper Boy never gives up; he always comes back.

  Efraim was aware that his options were limited. The Paper Boy was impatient, and with good reason. However, Efraim must set up a meeting with him, explain why the hunt must end. Justice had been done, vengeance served. So the game must stop. Immediately.

  It won’t get any better than this. You have to accept that.

  The water carrying the ship billowed beneath the hull. Anyone with a tendency toward seasickness had chosen the wrong night to sail. The northerly climate was merciless. Only the darkness was worse. Efraim couldn’t remember when he had last felt so tired.

  The cold made him shiver, reminding him of why he had gone up on deck in the first place. He wasn’t dressed for the biting wind that had come with nightfall. Soon he would have to go back inside.