‘We’re looking at it now,’ Peder answered. ‘Maybe Fredrika can tell us where we stand?’
Fredrika sat up at the mention of her name and began as usual by opening her notebook. Alex had to suppress a smile that could have been misinterpreted as mocking. She was always so well prepared.
‘Jakob Ahlbin has drawn attention to himself in two particular contexts,’ she began, and went on to tell them about the refugee family allowed to take refuge in his church while the Migration Agency ruled on their case. ‘And then there’s the support group,’ she went on. ‘I’ve contacted the person who runs it, Agne Nilsson. He seemed very distressed by Jakob’s death and wanted to come here and talk to us tomorrow morning. I said that would be fine.’
‘Did you say anything about the threats Jakob had been sent? Was he aware of those?’ asked Alex.
‘Yes, he was,’ answered Fredrika. ‘But no one had taken them seriously. I mean, they knew their work antagonised various people. And anyway, Agne thought the emails had stopped.’
Alex looked surprised.
‘Why did he think that?’ asked Peder.
‘Because they talked about it last week, and Jakob said he hadn’t had any for over a week.’
Peder leafed through the sheets of paper in front of him.
‘That’s not right,’ he said. ‘He got another three emails in the last fortnight he was alive.’
‘Strange,’ said Alex. ‘We’d better ask him about that tomorrow.’
He made a note on his pad.
‘And there’s another strange thing,’ he said, ‘namely that no one else seemed to know about the threats. Not Sven Ljung, who found the bodies, and not Ragnar Vinterman, either. Why hadn’t Jakob confided in anyone?’
Joar put his head on one side.
‘It might not be that odd,’ he said softly. ‘Not if Jakob wasn’t taking the emails seriously. Maybe it had happened before when he was working on other cases.’
‘Are there any other threatening messages in his inbox?’ Alex asked Peder.
Peder shook his head.
‘No, but that doesn’t mean he hadn’t had any. Just that he hadn’t saved them.’
Alex glanced at the time and decided to wind things up.
‘Okay,’ he summed up. ‘We still don’t know whether the threats are relevant for our purposes, but we definitely can’t discount this information until we’ve talked to the support group and, of course, Tony Svensson himself. I want a print-out of all telephone traffic to and from all the numbers Jakob Ahlbin used; see if we can find out if this Tony called him as well as emailing. Then we’ll go to the prosecutor and ask if we can bring him in for unlawful menace to start with. Is there anything else in this case we need to discuss just now?’
Peder hesitated but then raised his hand.
‘The fact that Job was mentioned in one of the last emails,’ he said, and told them his own thoughts on the matter.
He suddenly felt very stupid.
But Alex was paying attention.
‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘What do the rest of you think?’
Joar shifted in his seat.
‘Might be interesting, but not all that startling, It clearly hasn’t passed Tony Svensson by that he was emailing a clergyman,’ he said, making Peder feel hot and uncomfortable.
‘Assuming we can expect someone with Tony Svensson’s background to know who Job was,’ said Fredrika. ‘Isn’t that the most important thing to consider?’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Alex.
‘I mean exactly what I say, that the odds of someone like Tony Svensson casually throwing biblical names into his correspondence and making them fit his purposes so well don’t seem all that high.’
Alex looked faintly embarrassed.
‘I have to admit I didn’t know exactly who Job was until Peder gave us his story just now.’
Fredrika smiled and said nothing.
‘By the way, has anybody got anything new on Johanna, the daughter?’ Alex asked, to change the subject. ‘It seems more and more vital for us to find her asap. Especially in the light of our visit to the Ekerö house today.’
Nobody answered. None of them had anything new to impart.
Alex ran his eyes round the assembled company.
‘Anything else?’ he enquired.
Fredrika put her hand up.
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I’ve got more on that hit-and-run victim,’ she said.
‘Ah,’ said Alex. ‘Do tell us!’
‘It seems he was murdered,’ said Fredrika. ‘He wasn’t just run over, you see – the car was also backed over him.’
Alex groaned aloud with frustration.
‘Damn,’ he said. ‘Just what we need, another murder enquiry.’
His sense of the huge amount of work in front of him intensified. This was clearly a mess he was not going to untangle any time soon.
As she was leaving work, Fredrika tried to phone Spencer. He did not answer, which unsettled her. Her need to hear his voice more regularly was growing daily, especially as evening approached and the time left to her before the terrors of the night was short.
How did I end up here? she wondered, for what must be the thousandth time. How could all my dreams and plans lead me to this miserable crossroads in my life?
The answer was always the same, as it was this evening, too. It was decades since she had been guided by her innermost dreams. She had been navigating by makeshift solutions and setting her sights on second-rate choices.
I am what you turn into when you are robbed of freedom of choice, she thought wearily. I am a residual product, marked by that wretched bloody Accident.
So there it was in her mind again, the Accident. The most tangible cut-off point.
Early in life she had set herself the goal of becoming a violinist. Music was her family’s natural setting; Fredrika and her brother had practically grown up in the wings of a succession of major stages where they had waited with their father for the end of their mother’s latest concert or recital.
‘Can you see Mummy playing?’ their father would whisper, his eyes suffused with pride. ‘Can you see the way she lives for what she does?’
Then, Fredrika had been too young to reflect on what her father was saying, but later on in life she had started to question that phrase. Living for what you did, could that really be right?
And what dreams and visions did her father have? She was horrified to realise she had no concept of that at all. Perhaps he had had no greater wish than to follow his wife around the world and watch her dazzle one audience after another? Things had changed when the children started school, of course. Her mother accepted fewer engagements abroad, and for the first time, the children had a clearer idea of their father’s professional identity. He had a job that meant having to wear a suit, and he sold things. Successfully, it seemed. Because they were certainly well off.
Fredrika started violin lessons when she was just six. It was perhaps her first experience of what is described as love at first sight. She loved both the violin and her teacher, who must have thought her a good pupil, because he remained her teacher right up until the accursed Accident. And he had been at her side throughout her convalescence, offering encouragement and assuring her that it would still be possible to play as she had before.
But he was wrong, thought Fredrika, closing her eyes for a moment.
Many years had passed, but it was still so easy to conjure up the images in her mind. The car as it skidded, somersaulted and went flying. The hard ground, the skis tumbling out of the roof box. Her friend’s endless screaming when she saw her mother’s face smashed against the side window of the car. And the firemen’s desperate struggle: ‘The car could explode at any minute. We’ve got to get them out of there, and fast!’
Fredrika sometimes thought it would have been just as well if they had left her there in the car, since the life that came afterwards was not worth living. Her left arm had been badly injured a
nd would never be the same again. They made so many attempts that her whole life came to revolve round the battle to restore her arm.
‘It won’t be up to the strain,’ said the doctor who finally delivered a verdict. ‘You’ll be able to play for a few hours a week, but several hours a day? Out of the question. You would be in the sort of pain that would be intolerable in the long term. And the wear and tear on your arm could easily make it entirely unusable.’
He had not understood what he was saying, of course. He lived under the illusion that she was grateful, and glad to have survived. That she was glad she had not died, as her friend’s brother had died. But she had no feelings of that kind.
Not then and not now, Fredrika thought dully, sitting on the sofa in the quiet of her flat.
She had never played the violin just for fun, but as a way of life, a way of earning a living. And since the Accident she had not played at all. At the very top of a cupboard, right at the back, the violin lay untuned in its case, waiting.
Fredrika stroked her stomach, where the baby lay resting.
‘If you ask me really nicely, maybe I’ll play a little something for you one day,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe.’
It was six o’clock by the time Alex got home. His wife met him at the door. There was a strong aroma of garlic.
‘Italian tonight,’ she smiled as he kissed her. ‘I’ve got out a bottle of wine.’
‘Are we celebrating something?’ Alex asked in surprise.
They seldom had wine in the week.
‘No, I just thought we deserved a little treat,’ Lena replied. ‘And I got home from work a bit early today.’
‘I see. Why was that?’
‘Oh, no special reason, but I had the chance so I thought I’d come home and make something nice for dinner.’
She gave a slightly shrill laugh from the kitchen, where she was making a salad.
Alex went though the day’s post. They had a card from their son in South America.
‘Great postcard,’ he called out.
‘Yes, I saw it,’ Lena responded. ‘It’s so nice to hear from him, isn’t it?’
And she laughed that laugh again.
Alex went out to the kitchen and observed her as she stood with her back turned. She had always been the more open-hearted and attractive of the two of them. She could have had whoever she wanted, but she had chosen Alex. Even though he had grey streaks in his dark hair from an early age and deep lines on his face. For some reason he had always found it a bit unsettling that he was somehow more of a chosen one in the relationship than she was. Over the years he had at times felt incredibly jealous when other men got too close to her or he felt inadequate in some way. This jealousy had been a problem for both of them and a source of shame for him. What was wrong with him, not trusting Lena, who had given him such a fantastic home and two wonderful children?
As time passed he felt more secure. That was partly thanks to his job. His profession helped him develop a good sense of intuition, and that almost always helped him get the better of the demons that taunted him with fancies that his wife was deceiving him behind his back.
His intuition brought him certainty. Certainty when everything was all right, and also when it was not. And this time it was not.
The feeling had been creeping over him for several weeks now. She was talking differently, waving her arms about in a way he could not recall seeing earlier. She would go on at length about subjects that were unfamiliar to both of them. About places she wanted to visit and people she wished she had stayed in touch with. And then there was that laugh, which had changed so rapidly from deep and intense to shrill and superficial.
Watching her from the back, he even thought her posture had changed. She seemed stiffer somehow. And she gave a little shudder when he took hold of her, laughed her new laugh and pulled away. Sometimes her mobile rang and she went into another room to answer it.
‘Can I help with anything?’ he asked her back view.
‘You can open the wine,’ she answered, trying to sound happy and relaxed.
Trying. That was the thing. She was trying to be herself, as if playing some strange theatrical role that had unexpectedly landed in her lap. Alex’s stomach hurt as fear clutched his insides and the demons awoke once more.
We ought to be able to talk about this, he thought. Why aren’t we?
‘Did you have a good day at work?’ she asked him when they had been sitting in silence for a while.
‘Yes,’ Alex said gently. ‘It was fine. Lots on.’
Normally she would have picked up the thread and asked more. But not any more. Now she only seemed to ask things she didn’t really seem to care about.
‘How was yours?’ he asked.
‘That was fine, too,’ she said, opening the oven to check whatever it was she had cooked.
The smell was amazing, but Alex did not feel hungry. He asked her a few more questions about work, as always, and she gave him brief answers, her head turned away.
When they sat down to eat the delicious dinner and drink the good wine, he had to force himself to swallow as he chewed.
‘Skål,’ she said.
‘Skål.’
When he raised his head to catch her eye, he could have sworn it looked as though she was starting to cry.
FRIDAY 29 FEBRUARY 2008
STOCKHOLM
It was morning and the flat was freezing cold. The smell of cigarette smoke was not as overpowering as before because they had mended the fan for him and given him the key to one of the little windows. It was almost lunchtime, but Ali did not feel like getting up. The bag stood on the floor at the foot of the bed, a grim and blatant reminder of his new reality.
He still did not know who to curse for his misfortune. Perhaps his parents for bringing him into the world in a country like Iraq. Perhaps the American president who everybody loved to hate and who had toppled the great leader Saddam and then abandoned the people when the country collapsed. Or perhaps Europe, which refused to let him in on any terms other than those with which he was now faced.
Whichever way he looked at it, he could not see that it was his fault. He had neither started the damn war nor made himself unemployed and defenceless. All he had done was shoulder his responsibility like a decent husband and father.
His wife must be wondering where he was. And his friend, who had still not heard from him, must be wondering too. He turned his eyes towards the cold window. His friend must be out there somewhere. In a city he did not know, in a land where he was a complete stranger. They would make a new start there, he and his family. It was for their sakes he was going to carry out his task on Sunday. He would never do anything like that ever again. For as long as he lived.
‘There are some basic rules, my lad,’ his father had said when he was a child. ‘You don’t fight and you don’t steal. Simple, eh?’
His father had died by the time Iraq collapsed as a state and a nation, and everyday life turned to chaos. Perhaps even he would have understood that it had now become impossible to stick to the rules. Not because things were better before, but because things had been calmer and ostensibly safer. But only ostensibly. Many people knew how it felt to hear the cars pull up in front of your house early in the morning and have your private home violated and invaded by unknown armed men sent by the government to bring in a citizen for interrogation. Some of them were never heard of again. Others were returned to their families in a state that bore witness to such appalling atrocities that even their closest family had no words for them.
Iraq was different now. The unforeseen violence came from another direction and created even greater insecurity. Money had grown important in a way it had not been before, and suddenly kidnapping was part of daily life, along with theft and arson and armed robbery.
Was that the sort of person he had turned into, as well? With a bag containing a gun and a balaclava beside his bed, there was every justification for the comparison.
We couldn’t
go on, thought Ali. Forgive me, Father, for what I’m going to do, but we couldn’t go on.
Then he reached out a trembling hand for his eighth cigarette of the day. Soon it would all be over and a better future would be secured.
BANGKOK, THAILAND
The Swedish Embassy opened at ten and she was there waiting. It had been a long and wretched night. In the end she had had to check into a cheap youth hostel on the outskirts of Bangkok and had spent the night anxiously awake. The money she had with her, what little the mugger had not taken, was not enough to pay her bill. She asked the man at reception where the nearest cashpoint machine was and implied she would soon be back with a handful of notes. He told her it was three blocks away, and she was able to leave the hostel without creating a scene.
The Embassy was housed in a tall building just next to the Landmark Hotel on Sukhumvit, occupying two whole floors. Her relief at seeing the Swedish flag on the door was so great that tears came to her eyes.
She had planned her story carefully. She must not on any account say why she had come to Thailand, but that was a minor problem as she saw it. She was a tourist, plain and simple. Like all the other hundreds of thousands of Swedes who came here every year. And the fact that she had been robbed of all her means could not be unheard of, either. In her trouser pocket she had the copy of the police report to substantiate her story. The rest of what had happened to her – the fact that someone had cancelled her flight home, closed her email accounts and checked her out of the hotel – was something she had decided not to tell them. It would provoke far too many questions that she was not prepared to answer.
The loss of all her work material was hard to bear. The full weight of it had hit home in the night. Even her camera with all the pictures was gone. She swallowed to keep the tears at bay. Soon she would be home and then she could start to sort out this mess. At least she hoped so, with all her heart.
Maybe she should have foreseen that it would never work. That whoever had already taken such pains to take apart her life bit by bit naturally had not overlooked the possibility that she would turn to the Embassy. But she had not thought that far ahead, and did not notice the hard stare of the receptionist which followed her as she was shown in to see a member of the diplomatic staff.
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