Anna’s hocus-pocus. Sara had forgotten that side of her friend. She wasn’t just an effective and analytical police officer – she had a fuzzy, witchy side too.
‘He hasn’t passed over,’ said Anna. ‘You touched him – you ought to be able to feel that.’
‘Sorry,’ said Sara. ‘I can’t feel a thing.’
‘I’m getting a lot. This house is full of memories – energies.’
‘Not surprising, given all their parties,’ said Sara.
Anna looked deep into her eyes.
‘Nothing?’
‘No.’
‘There’s someone here who doesn’t want to talk to me. I think they want to speak to you.’
‘Give him my mobile number,’ Sara said with a smirk.
‘Maybe it’s best if you stay a little while,’ said Anna, ignoring Sara’s grin. ‘Is that all right?’
‘Of course.’
Ghost or not, Sara thought she could be of some assistance.
In the kitchen, Christian was holding his wife’s hand. Sara had only met him a few times: once at the shopping mall in Sickla when she’d run into them by chance, and then of course at their wedding, which had been an odd experience. A clear reminder of a part of Sara’s past that was gone – beyond reach.
She had never felt so dictated to, so unwelcome, while it was also demanded that she be there. The perfect wedding required that all periods of the bride’s life be represented, but it felt as if it bothered Malin that Sara was one of those parts. The childhood friend. The friend who had fallen – degraded from the idyllic Bromma to the miserable Vällingby, according to Malin. So Sara thought.
Christian extended a hand, and Sara got the impression that the serious expression was a pose he’d chosen to adopt. The same could probably be said of the rest of his exterior: well-ironed shirt, dress trousers with Hermès belt and an expensive watch. There were thousands of financiers just like him. Drove a BMW or Audi, worked out twice a week, used as many skin products as their wives. But he doubtless earned loads of money, and that was probably important to Malin. It could hardly be his personality she’d fallen for. Sara doubted whether she would be able to pick Christian out of a line-up a minute after meeting him.
‘Hi. Have you called Lotta?’ she asked.
Christian looked from Sara to his wife and then back to Sara.
‘No. Sorry. I didn’t think of that. I—’
‘It doesn’t matter. I was going to ask you something else – could you go back to yours and check whether Agneta has gone there?’
‘Absolutely . . . Can I take the kids with me?’
Sara looked at Anna.
‘Of course,’ she said.
‘You don’t need to ask them anything? It’s OK for them to leave?’
‘You’re free to take them with you. Where is it you live, by the way?’
‘Lidingö.’
Of course.
‘Will you be all right, darling?’ Christian said to Malin.
‘Yes. Sara’s here.’
Sara couldn’t help being surprised by the sudden confidence in her – almost a little moved. But then it struck her that Christian might now play the same role in Malin’s life that Sara had done in childhood: someone who did as she told them to, someone who could admire her and fetch her things. Provided that there was someone like that nearby, Malin was probably OK – perhaps it was that simple. That thought wasn’t as touching.
‘I’ll call later,’ said Christian to Sara, before looking at his wife again to show that the words also applied to her. Annoyingly, he made the gesture with his thumb and little finger held out.
‘Shall I call Lotta?’ said Sara once he’d left.
‘I’ll do it. I just don’t know what to say.’
Sara pulled out her mobile and got Lotta’s personal number from Malin. Lotta answered after two rings.
‘Hello, this is Sara Nowak.’
‘Hello.’
She paused briefly to give Lotta the chance to say something, but she didn’t so Sara carried on.
‘Have you heard from your mother recently?’
‘Yes, we were there today.’
‘But not since you left here?’
‘No. What do you mean “here”? Are you there?’
‘I’m a police officer nowadays, as you might know. I’m here with Malin at Stellan and Agneta’s. I’m afraid I’ve got bad news. Your father is dead. And your mother is missing.’ A new pause to give Lotta the opportunity to take in what she’d just heard. After a period of silence on the line, Sara spoke again. ‘We’re assuming your mother is unharmed. That she’s just hiding somewhere. When people are scared and upset, it’s easy for them to make slightly irrational decisions.’
‘“Hiding”? Why?’
‘Because Stellan’s been murdered. And we think Agneta may have fled from the murderer.’
There was a long silence before a sound was heard on the other end.
‘Are you joking?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Murdered?’
‘Yes. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe a burglar. We don’t know. We’re making inquiries and trying to find out if anyone saw anything.’
‘I’m on my way.’
Sara ended the call, which gave a male uniformed officer the opportunity to report to Anna.
‘We’ve now dealt with all the nearest houses – no one heard or saw anything. We’ll continue working outwards over a wider radius. Unfortunately there’s no public CCTV here. The boating club has a system, but only overlooking the jetties, and we don’t think the murderer arrived by boat, or that the missing person left by that route. We’ll still request the tapes, just to be sure. There are a lot of homes with CCTV, but they’re directed at doors and gardens. And no one reported their alarms going off, so our hypothesis right now is that Agneta Broman went along Grönviksvägen – presumably in the opposite direction her daughter came from when she returned. Either alone, or together with the perpetrator. If she was taken hostage, that is.’
Anna looked at Malin, as if she thought that the final remark had been rather a harsh thing to say in front of the daughter of the missing person. Sara also looked at Malin to see whether anything the policeman had said had caused a reaction. But she seemed to be absent.
‘Do we want to put out an appeal in the press to find her?’ the uniformed officer asked.
‘Not yet,’ said Anna.
Then there was silence until Malin startled everyone by crying out:
‘But where is she?’
6
All the air had escaped en route.
The back tyre was empty by the time Agneta reached Drottningholm, and the front tyre by Nyckelby – so she cycled the final kilometres on the rims alone. She hoped that no one would notice her because of it. But then again, a pink bicycle with no air in the tyres didn’t exactly scream ‘murderer on the loose’, so she crossed her fingers.
With the collar of her coat turned up and her hat pulled down as far as it would go, Agneta had at least made it hard for passers-by to get a good look at her. There was more of a risk that someone would think she was a mad old bat who’d escaped from her old people’s home as she pedalled on, panting and her face bright red. Wrapped up in furs in this heat! If they thought that, they might try to return her against her will.
It was at least twenty years since she’d last been on a bicycle, if not longer. The sweat was running down her brow and soaking her back, and she had been obliged to stop and rest several times. Her heart was pounding so hard that it felt like being punched by a fist.
All the other cyclists on Ekerö had racing bikes and shiny, skin-tight lycra clothing. Agneta was wearing ECCO shoes and riding an old bike with a puncture.
Hopefully, they would all just take her for an old dear who had never got her licence and cycled everywhere instead. A local born and bred – there were still plenty of them on the islands in Mälaren. In just a decade or so, they would all be gone – house prices had tri
pled, and many homes were now occupied by displaced city dwellers who drove much too fast on the winding country roads, careless of local wildlife.
Only when she turned down the narrow gravel track towards the barn in the woods did she ask herself whether everything would still be there.
When had she actually last checked?
Ten years ago? Twelve? It hadn’t been as long as fifteen, in any case. Was it as recently as five? The years all merged into one, flashing by like the landscape outside the window on a train journey – hard to take in, impossible to stop, and you soon forgot the details. All the houses, trees and vehicles turned into one single blur, leaving your thoughts to wander. You were everywhere except the here and now. You forgot that you were on your way somewhere. That was how her life had passed by.
Until now. The train had stopped and she had got off in a place she hadn’t seen for a long time.
Agneta’s legs were trembling with overexertion when she finally propped the bicycle against the wall of the barn. Her throat was on fire and her lungs felt as if they were going to explode. Her level of fitness was dismal, but was that any surprise at this age?
In the life she had chosen long ago, there was no retirement age – and now she realised all too clearly the downside of that.
There was a small padlock key attached to her car keys. She had no idea what the farmer who rented out the spot in the empty barn made of it all, but she hoped he’d bought her story about a nostalgic car owner in long-term care who refused to die – which was why his car remained here, year after year. As long as the money kept arriving in his account, he probably didn’t care, she thought to herself.
The padlock was a little stiff, but eventually it opened. She unhooked it and swung open the doors. An old, pale blue Volvo 245 estate model. KOA 879. Chosen because it was easy to drive, reliable and simple to repair. Good as new, albeit covered in a thick layer of dust.
It struck her how old-fashioned this entire safety net was. But no one had counted on time galloping away like this, or thought that it would be relevant after so many years. But now things were how they were. And she needed to check the crumbling remains of the once well-oiled machine to see whether there was anything that might be of use to her.
Of course, the car wouldn’t start – so she opened the bonnet, attached the battery charger and plugged it into the wall socket.
The fact that she had picked a barn with an electricity supply all those years ago had been an inspired decision. Secluded location, uninterested owner and an electricity supply. Just as she had so often done before, she wondered exactly how good she was compared with others in her world. She knew that she was skilled, but perhaps all her old colleagues had been even better?
Perhaps she had merely been a cheerful amateur? A useful idiot. The fact that so many people had seen her had been entirely deliberate and necessary, but what was the truth of the situation?
If nothing else, Agneta would need to deliver a top-level performance to pull off what was expected of her.
In all likelihood, she was under time pressure too. But you couldn’t rush everything. Eight hours was how long it would take to charge the battery, according to the manual, and her arthritis meant she wouldn’t be able to move for several hours after the bicycle ride.
Sometimes it helped to apply liniment before the aches set in, so Agneta got out her Siduro and a tin of the old classic, Sloan’s – the one that Stellan had always borrowed to avoid buying his own, thus acknowledging that he, too, had grown old.
Then she got out her blood sugar monitor – a Mendor Discreet – pricked her finger and checked the sensor. Good results. Perhaps she should have waited a little longer before testing. The exertion might not have taken its toll yet.
She got out the food bag she had put in her rucksack. Apples, biscuits and some tinned sausages – but no can opener. It would have to be apples and biscuits. And hopefully some sleep.
Eight hours alone in a barn with the back seat of a car as the only place to rest. A serious delay, but there was nothing to be done about that.
She was tired, so she welcomed the chance to sleep. And hopefully no one had found Stellan. They weren’t expecting visitors. No one had any reason to come to the house.
That gave her the days she needed, and she didn’t need to worry about her other targets being tipped off.
The only question was how quickly Suleiman could get here.
Suleiman, or Abu Omar, or Abu Rasil – whichever name he was using this time.
The legend that she’d never met, although he’d supposedly been watching at a couple of training camps that Agneta had attended during the 1970s. Even back then, he’d been an icon about whom significantly more stories were told than could possibly be true. The myth who was always one step ahead of the Israeli Mossad and the Western intelligence agencies. The one who avoided hundreds of attempts to arrest or kill him. Was he still alive? Was he going to turn up?
Agneta knew the phone call meant he was on his way.
Was he already in the country? If so, things were bad. But she was counting on him having been somewhere far away – probably living under a false name in the Middle East. But perhaps he’d been living his new life in Europe, which would mean he could get here much more quickly.
People like Abu Rasil weren’t normally able to travel all that fast. It wasn’t just a case of hopping on the next flight to Sweden. Naturally, everyone had their eyes on one another.
So perhaps she had a few days after all.
She needed all the time she could get, especially at this age. She needed to rest in advance of what was coming.
What she had just begun.
Her own mission.
It was still hard to take it in after all these years.
Now it was actually happening.
Until now it had merely been a distant threat, a catastrophic scenario, an unpleasant fantasy.
After thirty years of a completely different life – a normal life – she was suddenly back to being the person she had been in her youth. The person she had been drilled from childhood to become.
Would she pull it off?
7
‘This is crazy!’
Less than half an hour after their call, Lotta stormed into the kitchen.
‘Police everywhere. At Mum and Dad’s.’
Trailing in her wake was a skinny young woman with a huge underbite and a careworn air about her. She was weighed down with double shoulder bags plus a separate laptop bag, and was presumably an ambitious assistant whom Lotta was leaning on rather too heavily.
‘Sara,’ said Lotta, giving her a quick hug before embracing Malin. Then she shook hands with Anna.
‘Lotta Broman.’
‘Detective Inspector Anna Torhall.’
Sara examined her friend from childhood and saw that she’d gained a few grey hairs since they’d last met. Lotta would never dream of dyeing her hair. And the few wrinkles she had were probably a source of pride. They showed that she was serious. A professional woman. Director General of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, with many years ahead in her career.
‘What’s happened?’ said Lotta, turning to Sara. ‘How is this possible? Is it really true? Where is he?’
She looked around, as if her father might appear in the kitchen – perhaps looking a little embarrassed that they’d been brought here for his sake.
‘Sit down,’ said Sara, while Anna loitered in the background. She was leaning against the kitchen counter, listening. Agneta had never liked her doing that, Sara thought to herself.
‘Coffee?’ said the downtrodden assistant.
‘Yes, put some on for everyone,’ said Lotta. ‘The coffee is in that cupboard over there.’
‘I don’t think we should touch anything,’ said Malin.
Lotta looked at Sara.
‘A pot of coffee should be all right,’ she said, after checking with Anna, and the assistant turned away.
‘OK,’ said Lotta. ‘Talk.’
‘Your father was shot,’ said Anna, stepping into the centre of the room. She waited a second before continuing. ‘In the living room. We don’t know by whom or why. And Agneta is missing. We’re searching for her, and we’re assuming she fled when she heard the shot, and that she’s hiding somewhere.’
‘But where?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘You have to find her!’ Malin leaped up, looking as though she wanted to run away, but didn’t know where to. ‘It’s been several hours!’
‘There are police patrols out there searching the area,’ said Sara, updating Lotta. ‘Making inquiries and looking for evidence.’
‘Sara,’ said Lotta. ‘It’s our mum.’
‘I understand that it’s a lot to take in. But they know what works best. Trust them.’
‘“Them”? Aren’t you working on this?’
‘No. I’m just here as a friend of the family.’
There was silence for a moment, as if everyone needed to digest what had just been said.
‘Shot?’ said Lotta.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. It’s hard to get your head around.’
‘Is he still in there?’ Lotta added, pointing towards the living room.
‘No. They’ve just driven him to the forensic medicine centre.’
‘Are they going to cut him up?’
‘You mean an autopsy? Yes.’
Naturally, it was impossible to contemplate one’s father not only being dead, but shot, Sara thought to herself. And then cut open on a stainless steel bench, with strangers turning the body inside out and examining, weighing and measuring. One’s father taken apart. And just a couple of hours after seeing him and everything being normal.
‘I need to ask, even if it might sound strange,’ said Anna. ‘But have there been any threats against Stellan?’
‘Threats? No. Of course not.’ Lotta couldn’t help laughing incredulously.
‘Did he get into any disputes with anyone? A quarrel? Maybe he received some angry emails? Had anyone made threats?’ The sisters shook their heads time after time. ‘Was he honked at while out driving? Might he have driven in a way that upset someone?’
Gieger Page 5