The Chosen

by Kristina Ohlsson

  “Why were you in the apartment instead of her office?”

  “Because I was in Kungsholmen anyway.”

  “So she stayed at home rather than going into work just so that she could meet you?”

  “She said she could just as easily work from home.”

  “But you’ve been to the office on Torsgatan?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you get to know one another, you and Mona Samson?”

  Saul shifted in his seat and glanced at his lawyer, who still hadn’t said a word.

  “We met at a conference in Brussels last spring.”

  Classic.

  “How would you describe your relationship?”

  Saul’s expression grew wary.

  “Professional.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “Yes.”

  Really?

  It was Alex’s turn to sigh.

  “I’m going to give you one more chance to answer my question. Where were you when Simon and Abraham disappeared on their way to the tennis center?”

  Saul leaned forward across the table.

  “I was in Kungsholmen with Mona Samson.”

  Alex also leaned forward, meeting Saul halfway.

  “How come you rang Mona Samson at three o’clock that afternoon?”

  A rapid blink, but otherwise Saul remained impassive.

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Can’t.”

  “Because?”

  A thin smile played around Saul’s lips.

  “Because I’d left my phone at home that day. Abraham might have used it and called the wrong number by mistake. Or it could have been my wife. I don’t know, because I wasn’t at home.”

  Fuck.

  But Alex hadn’t finished.

  “When you called Mona Samson’s cell phone, it was near the bridge—Djurgårdsbron. Had she also left her phone somewhere?”

  The lawyer decided to speak up.

  “It’s hardly up to my client to explain where Mona Samson’s cell phone was that afternoon.”

  Alex backed off.

  “Where is Mona Samson at the moment?”

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  “Are you in a relationship with her?”

  Saul burst out laughing.

  “I’m sorry, are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, no. No, no, no—I am not in a relationship with Mona.”

  The lawyer cleared his throat and looked demonstratively at his watch.

  “If this is all you’ve got, I think we’re just about done here,” he said.

  Pure rage surged through Alex’s body, putting all his senses on full alert. No fucking way was Saul Goldmann getting off so easily.

  At that point the interview was interrupted as a colleague knocked on the door and came in.

  “Can I speak to you for a moment?” he said to Alex.

  Alex got up and left the room.

  “This had better be good news,” he said.

  “It is. Mona Samson has been in touch. She’s retracted her previous statement. Saul Goldmann left her apartment at two o’clock.”

  The plane was cruising at thirty thousand feet. Fredrika Bergman was in a window seat, feeling stressed because she wasn’t on the spot in Stockholm, where everything was happening, but calmed by the fact that as long as she was in the air, she was isolated from the rest of the world.

  With the help of what she had been told by David and Gali Eisenberg, they now had a viable theory.

  Saul Goldmann had become the Paper Boy.

  He had murdered Abraham, who was not his biological son.

  He had also, after waiting for many years, taken his revenge for the loss of his own father when he was a child. That was why he had targeted Simon and Polly Eisenberg, the children of the man responsible for sending Saul’s father to prison.

  But something was bothering Fredrika; she wasn’t completely satisfied with their conclusions. There were still several unexplained loose ends.

  Mona Samson, for example. Was she the person on the roof who had shot Josephine? And was it to conceal her involvement that she was hiding behind this peculiar security company that seemed to be little more than a facade?

  And then there was the Lion. Who might be Saul Goldmann. Or Efraim Kiel. But if Saul was the Lion, then Fredrika didn’t understand why he had chosen to make contact with the boys via email. The Lion was definitely linked to the murders in some way; if she hadn’t been convinced before, there was no doubt left in her mind when she found out about the name he had given in one of the Internet cafés. Therefore, the exchange of emails must have served a purpose—but what was it, if not to enable him to approach the boys without arousing their suspicion?

  Fredrika usually slept whenever she flew, but this time her body rebelled, refused to give in to tiredness.

  Because she knew something was wrong.

  They had stumbled onto something when they started asking the Israeli police questions, and Fredrika couldn’t work out what it was. The only thing she knew for sure was that they had come too close to information that the state of Israel wished to protect.

  There was nothing strange about that; such information exists in every country with self-respect. This time, however, it had jeopardized an important police investigation through a refusal to cooperate. She recalled what Isak Ben-Zwi had said to her: that she wouldn’t learn about the Paper Boy on the kibbutz. That she was deluded if she thought she would find what she was looking for there.

  He had sounded as if he knew who the Paper Boy was.

  But he obviously didn’t, because otherwise he would have known that Avital Greenburg had once been called exactly that: the Paper Boy.

  Could there be more than one Paper Boy?

  Of course not. The whole thing must be a mixture of classified information and a misunderstanding.

  Fredrika still couldn’t shake off the feeling of unease that was steadily growing stronger.

  Evidence was being withheld, for valid or invalid reasons. And that was damaging the investigation, leading them to the wrong conclusions.

  Gideon and Saul had lied about their professional backgrounds. They had also lied about their reasons for leaving Israel, either because they thought none of this was relevant in the hunt for whoever had murdered their sons or because they had no choice, regardless of whether they believed that this tragedy was linked to their past.

  The latter alternative worried Fredrika more than anything, because it could mean that the parents knew exactly why someone had chosen to murder their children in particular and that they had decided to handle it themselves, without involving the police.

  In which case the drama could well have a more apocalyptic resolution than any of them could imagine.

  The apartment is on Mariatorget. I want you and the girls to go there right away. Pack a bag and get a cab. I’ll be there later this evening.”

  Eden Lundell was talking as she walked from Säpo HQ to Alex Recht’s office in another building.

  “Eden, I’m just about to start cooking dinner for the girls,” her husband, Mikael, said wearily. “What are you talking about?”

  Her heart skipped a beat. She didn’t have time to be gentle and diplomatic; she just wanted him to do as she said.

  “I can’t explain what’s happened, but we won’t be able to stay at home for the next few days. Please do as I say. Get a cab to Police HQ in Kungsholmen and pick up the key in reception, then go to the apartment and wait for me there.”

  She would have spoken to Mikael earlier in the day but hadn’t been able to get ahold of him. That was fine: the girls were safer in some anonymous day care center than in the apartment.

  Thank God they weren’t at the Solomon school.

  She heard the sound of clattering in the background, along with her daughters’ nonstop chatter.

  Eden’s everyday life: all too often she was much too
small a part of that existence.

  “I’ll call you when we’ve eaten,” Mikael said.

  Eden stopped dead.

  “Mikael, for fuck’s sake, this is important. Just do as I say. Get in a cab. You can order pizza when you arrive.”

  She had raised her voice because of fear and frustration. It didn’t matter if there were only two people in the entire world who knew that Efraim Kiel was the father of her children; right now that was one person too many.

  “In that case you need to come home and explain why it’s so urgent,” Mikael said. “Because I am not about to drop everything on some whim of yours.”

  Eden could have wept. She hardly ever felt that way, and it frightened her.

  “Can’t you just do as I say? This is important. Really important.”

  Her tone was calmer now, and she had lowered her voice to its normal pitch.

  Mikael said something to one of the girls.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay. But tonight we need to have a proper discussion, because I can’t cope with this. You take off on some secret mission, then you call home and want us to turn our lives upside down. You just don’t do that. Not if you’re a family.”

  She nodded eagerly, overwhelmed with relief. She didn’t care how angry he was as long as he got out of that apartment.

  “Absolutely,” she said. “We’ll talk when I get there. See you later.”

  She slipped her cell phone into her pocket and ran the rest of the way to Alex’s office, straight up two flights of stairs without waiting for the elevator. She had called him a little while earlier and he had said he would be there for fifteen minutes but no longer.

  He was alone at his desk when she walked in.

  “Good God, did you run all the way?”

  She sat down.

  “I read online that the police had arrested the father of one of the boys as a suspect in the murders. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  Alex looked wary, as if he wasn’t sure how much he was prepared to tell her.

  “May I ask which of them it was, and why?”

  Alex glanced at his watch, then folded his arms.

  “We’ve just taken a break in the interview. I need to be back in ten minutes. Would you mind telling me why this is important to you?”

  What could she say to that?

  “As I told you, Säpo has a certain amount of interest in Efraim Kiel,” she said, choosing her words with care. “I just want to rule out any additional links to our operations in your investigation.”

  It was a weak answer. Why would she have come hurtling over there to find that out?

  But Alex didn’t seem to have time to ponder such an anomaly.

  “Do you remember my asking you about the Paper Boy?” he said.

  Eden nodded.

  “We now know who he is,” Alex said proudly.

  Eden couldn’t believe her ears. How was that possible? Surely the Israelis wouldn’t have shared such sensitive information with Fredrika Bergman!

  “A deranged child killer,” Alex said.

  She waited for him to tell her the rest: that the Paper Boy had been a secret source working for the Israelis, but instead he told her a completely different story.

  • • •

  Fifteen minutes later Eden Lundell was standing on Polhemsgatan, smoking a cigarette.

  Two Paper Boys.

  Two stories.

  Alex’s theory was more convincing than hers. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better. Kudos to Fredrika for her efforts in Israel. She had found out an astonishing amount in a very short time, information they would never have gotten from anyone else.

  She felt the weight of her cell phone in her pocket and thought about calling Mikael again, telling him they could stay at home.

  But that would annoy him even more. Mikael wasn’t the kind of person who could deal with mixed messages. Better to let them go to the apartment in Södermalm.

  Eden stubbed out her cigarette and went inside. It wasn’t until she was in the elevator on the way back to her office that she realized what she had done. That cigarette was the first one she had smoked since she arrived back in Sweden. She hadn’t missed them for several hours.

  The decision was made before the elevator doors opened.

  She yanked the packet of cigarettes out of her pocket and dropped them in the waste bin along with her lighter.

  Eden Lundell had smoked her last cigarette.

  Interview rooms were always too small. The air was always too stale, the light always a little too bright. They had started the second session, and Alex Recht didn’t care if he had to stay there all night. Saul Goldmann was going to start talking, and soon.

  “You can keep on telling me you left your phone in your apartment. You can keep on telling me that you can’t be responsible for the location of Mona Samson’s phone when you called her. But let me make one thing clear: Mona Samson has retracted her previous statement. She says you left her apartment at two o’clock. And guess what? We believe her.”

  Alex left the words hanging in the air, waiting for Saul Goldmann’s countermove.

  He had changed during the short break. He was a broken man.

  “Is she here?” he said. “Mona—is she here, too?”

  “No. But you are.”

  Mona Samson’s whereabouts were still unclear. She had told the police she was on a business trip to Norway; she had called from a different cell phone on a withheld number and said if they wanted to get ahold of her they could use the number they already had. It would take time to find out the new number and track the location of the phone. After speaking to her they had tried the old number, but the phone was switched off. They had asked her to come to Police HQ at her earliest convenience, but Alex suspected that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

  Saul Goldmann held up his hands in a defensive gesture.

  “Okay. I lied. I admit it, I lied. But I had nothing to do with Abraham’s murder. Nothing at all.”

  He swallowed hard, clasped his hands on the table. Looked down and paused for a moment before continuing.

  “It’s true, Abraham wasn’t my biological son. And it’s true that my father was the so-called Paper Boy. It was because of him that I had a vasectomy when I was only twenty; I was obsessed with the idea that I might be like him, that I would never be a good parent. It took time to get over what had happened, but my mother made sure I got help. Professional help. When Daphne and I moved in together I tried to have the vasectomy reversed, because I’d heard that was possible. But not in my case.”

  He looked very sad.

  “They said complications must have arisen and there was nothing they could do. So we went down the IVF route with donated sperm. It was a mutual decision. We both longed for children, and Abraham was very much a wanted baby when he was born.”

  The words simply flowed; no prompting was necessary. Alex listened in silence.

  “Daphne and I have been together for over twenty years. There is no woman in the world that I love more, but you know how it is: things get a little . . . dull. That’s what happened to us, and then Mona turned up. Very attractive, expressive, vibrant. She worked for an Israeli company in the process of setting up branches in Sweden. Mona is half-Israeli, half-Palestinian. I can’t explain why, but I fell for her. Slept with her the first time we met, then carried on in Stockholm.”

  He shrugged, looking slightly puzzled, as if he couldn’t quite understand why he was telling the police about his private life.

  “We met at her apartment last Wednesday. Had some sushi, went to bed. I left at two, but I was so tired I went home and went to sleep. She has that effect on men. You give her what she wants, and you can hardly remember a thing afterward. When I got home I realized I’d left my iPad in her apartment. That was why I called her, to find out when I could pick it up. Abraham would wonder where it was, and I didn’t want to end up in a situation where I had to start coming up with a whole load of explanati
ons. But she was difficult to get ahold of, and when I did speak to her she said she was tied up with meetings and wouldn’t be available for the next few days. She sent me the iPad by courier later that evening. Not exactly discreet.”

  He changed position on the uncomfortable chair, seeking the right words for what he wanted to say next.

  “Although of course nobody reacted to the business with the iPad, because by then we realized that something had happened to Abraham. Daphne went over to the Solomon Community, and Gideon and I began searching for the boys. We started near the tennis center, then moved farther and farther away. The police wanted to speak to us, of course, so we had to interrupt the search for a while. And I was in a complete panic.”

  Another defensive gesture, and this time he glanced at his lawyer.

  “I didn’t want to tell anyone why I’d been at home having an afternoon nap when Abraham went missing. I’d told Daphne and my work colleagues that I had a meeting, so I stuck to that and asked Mona to say the same if you contacted her. She was reluctant at first, but I persuaded her that it was the best thing to do. For the sake of the investigation. If you had to waste time following up a lot of unnecessary minor leads, you would lose the rhythm and might not find the boys.”

  Saul’s shoulders slumped.

  “But that’s what happened anyway,” he said.

  And that was the end of his account.

  Alex remained silent, taking in what he had heard. He felt completely at a loss; he didn’t know what to think.

  The story worked. Saul Goldmann still lacked a confirmed alibi for the time when the boys disappeared, but Alex knew he was telling the truth. Saul had shown different aspects of his character; the lack of that information had led Alex to judge his reaction to his son’s death as abnormal.

  But he still had questions.

  “Mona Samson—do you have a picture of her?”

  “Our relationship isn’t, or wasn’t, the kind that involves going around with photographs of each other in our wallets.”

  No picture. But Alex had a picture. Not of Mona Samson, perhaps, but of the woman who had brought a chrysanthemum to the Solomon Community after Josephine had been shot. And he had brought it with him to the interview room.