Silenced: A Novel

by Kristina Ohlsson

  ‘It was only a rumour,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘What was?’ asked Fredrika.

  ‘That there was a new way of getting to Sweden if you needed help.’

  His wife came back to hand round more biscuits. Nothing was said until she had finished.

  ‘You know how it is nowadays,’ he said tentatively. ‘It can cost up to 15,000 dollars to get to Sweden. Lots of the people who need to get away haven’t got that sort of money. When I first came it was different. Europe was different, and the routes weren’t the same. I heard from the son of a good friend of mine in Iraq that he was coming to Sweden on different terms.’

  Alex frowned.

  ‘And what were they?’

  ‘Other terms,’ Muhammad said again. ‘It was going to cost less and it would be much easier to get a residence permit.’

  He took a deep breath and reached out for his coffee cup.

  ‘But they were very demanding.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The smugglers. They had strict rules and it would be the worse for you if you didn’t stick to them. Or if you told anyone. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you, really. Not until my son’s friend was here.’

  ‘Hasn’t he got here yet?’ Fredrika asked cautiously.

  Muhammad shook his head.

  ‘One morning he was just gone, his father told me. But he never got here. Or if he did, he must be in hiding.’

  ‘But shouldn’t he have gone to the Migration Agency?’ Alex wondered.

  ‘Maybe he did,’ suggested Muhammad. ‘But he hasn’t been in touch, anyway.’

  ‘Did he have family at home in Iraq?’ asked Alex.

  ‘A fiancée,’ said Muhammad. ‘They were going to get married, but he must have had to go in a hurry. And he didn’t say anything to her before he left, either.’

  ‘Are you sure he even left his own country?’ Fredrika asked. ‘Couldn’t something have happened to him in Iraq?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Muhammad said evasively. ‘But I don’t think so. It’s not like it used to be, news gets around if anything happens to anyone. We would have heard if he’d been kidnapped or anything like that.’

  Alex digested this.

  ‘What made Jakob decide to phone you? Did he know that you had this information?’

  Muhammad’s face closed.

  ‘I’ve got a few contacts,’ he said carefully, and Alex knew he had hit the bull’s-eye. ‘It was them Jakob Ahlbin was ringing about. And then we got onto the other thing; it was me that brought it up.’

  ‘Jakob wasn’t already aware of it?’

  ‘No, he got the information from me. After he rang me, we arranged to meet somewhere, and I gave it to him.’

  Muhammad looked almost proud.

  ‘And these contacts of yours, who are they?’ said Alex, trying to keep it casual.

  ‘For other people who want to come to Sweden,’ said Muhammad quietly, looking down at his hands. ‘I’m not involved in that work myself, I just know who they can phone.’

  Alex had colleagues in the national CID who would have sold their own parents for names like those, but he decided not to give them Muhammad. They would have to find him for themselves.

  ‘Do you think this has anything to do with Jakob Ahlbin’s death?’ Muhammad asked curiously.

  Alex’s answer was short and to the point.

  ‘Maybe, we don’t know. It would be as well for you not to tell anybody we’ve been here.’

  Muhammad assured them he would not. And served them more coffee.

  ‘Hope your friend turns up,’ said Fredrika at the doorway as they were leaving.

  Muhammad looked uneasy.

  ‘Yes, I hope so, too,’ he said. ‘For Farah’s sake if nothing else.’

  Fredrika stopped short.

  ‘For whose sake?’

  ‘Farah, his fiancée. She’ll be beside herself with worry back home in Baghdad, I’m sure.’

  He gave a dejected sigh.

  ‘You wonder how it can be possible. How someone can just disappear off the face of the earth.’

  They had a final meeting in the Den before the weekend started. Peder and Joar were still busy writing up the interview when Alex called them in. It was very plain to him that if looks could kill, then Joar would be a dead man. Peder’s look had more hatred in it than any Alex had ever seen. What the hell had happened?

  ‘Well the whole bloody lot’s out in the media now,’ Alex said indignantly. ‘And they’ve already made their minds up: the vicar didn’t commit suicide but was murdered by right-wing extremists for taking a stand on the migrant question, which is such a hot potato at the moment.’

  He stopped.

  ‘Is that right? Is Tony Svensson our man?’

  ‘It’s clearly a lead worth evaluating,’ Joar said thoughtfully, ‘but I don’t think Tony Svensson necessarily did it himself. There are plenty of other interesting characters around him.’

  ‘Such as?’ asked Alex.

  ‘I put together a few things after the interview,’ he said. ‘A contact of mine in the national CID gave me a hand; they’ve been watching these guys for a long time because they suspect them of some rather advanced varieties of organised crime. Tony Svensson’s the leader of the group, but under him – or alongside him, really – there are various other known criminals. One of them’s a professional burglar, for example. He’d be more than capable of getting into the Ahlbins’ flat in the middle of the day without being noticed. And another one seems pretty good at getting hold of guns.’

  ‘But the couple were shot with Jakob Ahlbin’s own hunting pistol,’ objected Alex.

  ‘True,’ said Joar. ‘But maybe they needed other weapons to threaten their way into the apartment?’

  Alex considered this, and glanced towards Peder. The content of Joar’s presentation was clearly new to him. Alex therefore turned to him.

  ‘Peder, you were interviewing, too. What’s your spontaneous reaction?’

  ‘I suppose that could all fit,’ he said tersely, and Alex could see the veins protruding tensely in his neck.

  Peder got to his feet and nodded to Joar.

  ‘Have you finished, then? I’ve got something I want to show everybody, too.’

  A picture appeared on the white screen behind him as he started a slide show he had prepared.

  ‘This is Ronny Berg,’ Peder announced loudly. ‘He’s the defector that Jakob Ahlbin had a row with Sons of the People about.’

  He fixed the impassive Joar with a triumphant look.

  ‘I decided to have a chat to him this afternoon,’ he went on. ‘And he gave me some information.’

  ‘Did you go on your own?’ asked Alex.

  Peder breathed in.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think it would be a problem.’

  But it was, and Alex knew that Peder knew it. All interviews had to be approved by Alex beforehand.

  ‘Jakob Ahlbin only imposed one condition on Ronny,’ Peder went on. ‘That he immediately stopped any criminal activity he was involved in. And that was problematic, apparently.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Alex, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘The policy of the support group’s very straightforward,’ said Peder. ‘They’re happy to help anybody at all get back on track with their lives again, but they insist the person stops all criminal activity they’re involved in. That was what Tony Svensson meant when he said Jakob had asked Berg for something in return.’

  He took a breath and clicked onto the next picture.

  ‘Ronny Berg, former burglar, had a major heist planned which would bring in lots of cash, and he wanted to keep his fellow members out of it. But the Sons of the People got wind of it and there was big trouble. That was when Ronny Berg decided he wanted to leave the organisation, and he turned to the support group to help him, played repentant sinner and pretended he didn’t sympathise with the aims and ideologies of the organisation any more.

  ‘Did they swallow it?’ aske
d Fredrika.

  ‘Hook, line and sinker,’ said Peder. ‘To start with, at any rate. But then the Sons of the People tipped off the network that its new protegé wasn’t that keen on abandoning crime, after all, and Jakob Ahlbin decided to drop him.’

  ‘So Ronny Berg went back to the SP?’ said Alex.

  ‘No, not at all,’ said Peder. ‘He staked everything on doing this dream heist and getting out of the country. But Jakob Ahlbin anticipated his move and tipped off one of the police officers in the support network, who passed it on to his police colleagues.’

  Peder looked pleased with himself.

  ‘Where is he now, then?’ Fredrika asked in confusion.

  ‘He’s here in Stockholm, in Kronoberg Prison,’ said Peder.

  ‘And he told you the whole story?’ Alex said in astonishment.

  ‘He told me as much as he wanted to,’ said Peder. ‘I got the rest from the officers in the support group who had the tip-off from Jakob.’

  Alex drummed his fingers on the table.

  ‘How does Ronny Berg feel about Jakob Ahlbin now?’ he asked.

  ‘Hates him,’ Peder said.

  ‘Has he got an alibi for the night of the murder?’

  ‘Yes, he was already under arrest. The armed robbery had already spectacularly misfired by then. That was last Thursday, I think.’

  ‘So several days before Jakob and his wife were found dead,’ Alex said thoughtfully. ‘Plenty of time to plan a double murder and give orders for it to be carried out.’

  Peder shook his head.

  ‘In theory yes, I suppose,’ he said. ‘But in practice? No, I don’t think so. Ronny Berg hasn’t got that kind of network. Particularly not now he’s without the backup and protection of the SP.’

  Fredrika was poring dark-eyed over her notebook and Joar did not move a muscle. But he looked as if he was gritting his teeth, Alex thought.

  ‘I don’t buy this,’ Fredrika said with an urgency in her voice that Alex had not heard from her for a long time.

  ‘Don’t buy what?’ he asked.

  ‘The right-wing extremist line,’ she said, with a new focus in her eyes. ‘It’s like I was saying earlier, Alex, it all feels too advanced. Not the getting into a flat and shooting someone in the head, but the way it was done. And then there’s the background of Jakob Ahlbin’s condition. Whoever set up the murder must have known about it, that much is clear from the so-called suicide note.’

  She went on, ‘If we were to assume it was someone they knew, it would all seem less far-fetched. Then it wouldn’t be at all strange that they’d been let into the flat or that there were no signs of a violent struggle.’

  ‘And it would explain the letter and the insight into their private lives,’ Peder added.

  ‘And what would the motive be, in that case?’ Alex asked in frustration.

  Fredrika observed him for a moment.

  ‘I don’t know. But I think we ought to take a closer look at the link between Jakob Ahlbin and the man who was run down in Frescativägen, Yusuf.’

  A man they could finally put a name to, with an indirect link to Jakob Ahlbin. Jakob had had contact with Muhammad, who in turn knew Yusuf.

  ‘Has that link got anything to do with the right-wing angle?’ asked Joar.

  ‘Not as far as we know.’

  ‘But Muhammad was scared,’ Fredrika put in firmly. ‘His friend’s son came to Sweden and died before he could even get to the Migration Agency.’

  ‘Having first dashed off to rob a bank,’ Peder supplied.

  ‘Which gets us tangled up in all that messy bank robbery business,’ said Alex, pulling a face.

  Fredrika held her ground and indicated that she had more to say.

  Here we go, thought Alex. She’s woken up again at last.

  ‘There’s one other thing,’ she said.

  Alex noted that Joar was staring at Fredrika. He had not seen that side of her until now, Alex realised.

  ‘The emails,’ said Fredrika. ‘I think Tony Svensson was telling the truth when he said he didn’t write them all.’

  The others looked at her expectantly.

  ‘It came to me when I read them through again,’ she said. ‘Even the first time I’d felt it was slightly out of character for Tony Svensson to make those references to Job. The emails that came from computers other than his home one have rather a different tone.’

  Alex looked dubious.

  ‘Who would have access to his email account? The sender is clearly the same, whichever computer the emails came from.’

  ‘The emails sent from Tony Svensson’s own computer didn’t come from his personal email account. They came from one that all the SP have access to,’ said Fredrika. ‘So that means plenty of people to give away passwords and user names and so on.’

  She leafed through the email print-outs that she had brought with her.

  ‘I’m positive,’ she said. ‘Whoever wrote these emails from other computers kind of tried to mimic the tone of the earlier ones, but didn’t really pull it off. There are clear biblical references in all of them, but none in the ones from Tony’s computer. The SP emails are much cruder and more direct.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’ asked Alex, cupping his chin in one hand.

  ‘I can’t be totally sure,’ conceded Fredrika. ‘But maybe someone else knew about the threats Jakob had already had, and used them to flesh out the threat scenario against him. Maybe so we wouldn’t look elsewhere, so they wouldn’t be traced. But Jakob realised, I’m sure.’

  ‘Realised what?’ asked Alex, sounding more irritated than he meant to.

  ‘That the threats came from different sources. And were to do with different things. That would explain why Jakob decided not to say anything to Agne Nilsson about those last emails.’

  Fredrika pushed back some strands of hair that had flopped across her face.

  ‘We could follow up the email that was sent from Farsta library,’ she said. ‘You have to put your name on a list and show your ID card before you can go into the computer room there. They started doing that to clamp down on people coming in to surf porn sites.’

  ‘You check that out on Monday then,’ said Alex to round off the meeting, adding: ‘And keep an eye on the case of the man run over at the university. I want to know what the national CID come up with on that.’

  Fredrika nodded and the rest got to their feet, since the meeting seemed to be over.

  ‘Right, it’s the weekend,’ Alex declared. ‘Let’s go home.’

  Home. Anxiety gnawed at him as his thoughts turned to the two days off that lay ahead. Damn, he really had to come to some kind of decision. He left the Den without another word and trudged back to his room.

  He wished his son would ring from South America.

  Come home, he pleaded in his mind. Your mum hasn’t been herself these last weeks.

  He swallowed hard and touched the scar tissue on his hands. South America felt a bloody long way away.

  Then he made his mind up. If Lena herself volunteered no explanation over the weekend, he would share his worries with her at the start of next week.

  And in the shadow of his private anxiety, a work-related one was taking shape. If it was not Tony Svensson who had murdered Jakob and Marja Ahlbin, who the devil was it?

  Darkness, cold and a sky that was already as black as night met Fredrika as she left HQ to go home. Spencer would not be there until later; she had hours of solitude to kill.

  I need a hobby, she thought as she walked from Kungsholmen to her flat by Vasa Park. And more friends.

  Neither thing was really true. She had more friends than she had time for, and more leisure activities than she could ever fit in. But how did she end up with these voids of acute loneliness and inactivity? Fredrika had been wondering about this for several years and had concluded that the answer was actually quite simple: the problem was that she did not come first for anybody. There was no one for whom she took priority over everything else,
and so from time to time she found herself feeling lonely and abandoned when all her friends’ diaries were full and they had no time to meet up with her, just when she needed their company most.

  But was this evening really one of those times? It had been her own decision not to arrange anything with a friend while she was waiting for Spencer. On the other hand, no friends had rung, either.

  The lonely, forlorn feeling had greatly intensified since she got pregnant. The exhaustion and nightmares played their part. And the wretched pains that sometimes made her want to scream.

  She arrived home to a silent, empty flat. How she had loved this place when she found it. Big windows letting in huge amounts of light; polished pine floors. The original kitchen with a tiny maid’s room opening off it that she could turn into a little library.

  This was where I was reborn, thought Fredrika.

  The lights glimmered into life as she went round the flat turning them on, one after another. She put her hand on a radiator and found it cool. Spencer always objected to how cold she liked to keep the flat.

  Spencer. Always Spencer. What does it mean, the fact that you and I were destined to meet?

  The ringing of the phone cut through the flat. Her mother clearly had something on her mind.

  ‘Are you sleeping any better?’ was her opening gambit.

  ‘No,’ said Fredrika. ‘But I’m not in as much pain now. Haven’t been today, at any rate.’

  ‘I had an idea,’ her mother ventured.

  Silence.

  ‘Perhaps you’d feel better if you started playing again?’

  For a moment, time stood still and Fredrika was drowning in memories from the time before the Accident.

  ‘I don’t mean lots,’ her mother quickly added. ‘Not lots, just a little bit, to help you feel more in harmony with yourself. You know I always play when I can’t get to sleep.’

  There was a time when conversations like that would have been natural for Fredrika and her mother. Back then, they used to play music together and draw up guidelines for Fredrika’s future. But that was then, before the Accident. Now, Fredrika’s mother no longer had a right to discuss Fredrika’s playing with her, and sensed as much when her daughter did not respond.