Peder closed the Excel files of phone numbers. He would have to start all over again and take a fresh approach. Just then, Joar knocked at his door. Peder did not say a word, but glared as crossly as he could.
‘Surveillance rang,’ Joar said curtly. ‘We were right: Tony Svensson’s daughter’s as free as a bird. He went straight round to her school.’
‘Good,’ said Peder, equally curtly.
‘And he made two calls when he was with his daughter.’
Peder was in suspense.
‘One was to the girl’s mother, his ex, and the other was to an unregistered mobile.’
Peder sighed. What had he expected?
‘But we were at least able to tell roughly where the owner of the phone was when he took the call, and the record of calls and connections to phone masts told us where he’d spent his day.’
‘And where was that?’ asked Peder, on the edge of his seat.
‘Here in Kungsholmen. In the area of, or indeed in, the Kronoberg block.’
‘In Norrmalm Police Station, for example?’
Joar smiled.
‘Hard to say, but yes, maybe even there.’
On the way back from Skärholmen, Fredrika Bergman had an idea.
‘Could we go out to Ekerö and have a look at the daughters’ house?’
‘Why?’ asked Alex with a look of surprise.
‘Because I haven’t had a chance to see it yet,’ was Fredrika’s simple answer. ‘And I think it would help me to understand Karolina and Johanna better.’
‘So you feel sure both of them are implicated in the murder of their parents?’ Alex asked curiously.
Fredrika put both hands on her stomach.
‘Perhaps,’ was all she said.
Alex rang the prosecutor and got verbal permission to make a follow-up visit to the house, so they went via HQ to pick up the copy of the house key that the technical boys had made since the last visit. Half an hour later, they pulled up outside the house.
Alex frowned as they got out of the car.
‘Somebody’s been here,’ he said, pointing to parallel tyre tracks in the snow, which was just beginning to thaw.
‘Aren’t they the ones you made last time you were here?’ Fredrika asked.
‘No, they’re from a different car,’ said Alex, starting to take pictures of the tracks with the camera in his mobile phone.
Fredrika looked around her, breathing in the cool air and appreciating the silence.
‘It’s a lovely place,’ she said out loud.
‘No doubt it was even nicer before,’ said Alex, putting his phone away. ‘There used to be a meadow here,’ he said, pointing to the neighbouring property. ‘But the local council sold it off for development, of course.’
‘A meadow,’ repeated Fredrika, and a dreamy look came into her eyes. ‘Must have been pretty idyllic, growing up here.’
Alex went ahead of her to the house. The snow was compacted under his feet. The lock grated when he turned the key and the door made a faint protest as he opened it.
‘Well here we are, do come in,’ he said to Fredrika, standing aside to let her go first.
It was always fascinating to come into someone else’s home. Fredrika had been along on a number of house searches and often found herself starting to fantasise about the people who lived in the house or apartment. Whether they were happy or unhappy, poor or rich. Sadly enough, the reason for the police being there was often all too obvious to see. The home sent out signals of misery or social exclusion, and the dust lay thick on every surface.
The Ahlbin sisters’ house was not one of those. It felt homely and welcoming, even though it was clearly only a holiday place. Alex seemed busy with something in the kitchen, so Fredrika took a tour of the rooms, first downstairs and then upstairs. All the beds were made up, but under the heavy bedspreads the sheets smelled of damp. The wardrobes were empty apart from a few items of casual wear, all in Jakob Ahlbin’s size. The rooms were tastefully uncluttered but the furnishings still managed to be personal. Fredrika’s eye came to rest on a pressed flower in a frame, hanging on the wall. She had to go closer to see it properly. A pressed daisy, so old and brittle that it looked as though it might disintegrate any moment. All alone on an otherwise bare wall.
I wonder why? thought Fredrika, moving on to the next room.
She looked at all the family photos hanging on the walls and standing on chests of drawers, and all the toys and children’s shoes that must have belonged to the girls when they were little. Just as her male colleagues had done, she noted Johanna Ahlbin’s disappearance from the pictures. She was in them, and then suddenly she wasn’t.
Was it symbolic? she asked herself. Did Johanna come to be seen as a less important part of the family? And if so, why? Or was it she who broke with the rest of them?
Fredrika started going through the pictures systematically. First the upstairs ones and then those on the ground floor. She took down the frames, opened them and checked the back of each photo for any dates or annotations. She was pleased to see that whoever framed the pictures had been very methodical, identifying virtually all of them.
‘Jakob, Marja, Karolina and Johanna, autumn ’85.’
‘Jakob and Johanna laying up the boat for the winter, ’89.’
‘Marja and Karolina when the well froze, ’86.’
Fredrika was so engrossed in the operation that she did not hear Alex come up behind her.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, making her jump.
‘Look,’ she said, holding out one of the photos. ‘Someone’s dated them all.’
Alex followed her long, agile fingers with fascination as she silently opened up frame after frame. When she had finished, it was impossible to tell that every frame had been taken down, opened and then put back together again.
‘In 1992, something changes,’ she said with conviction, clapping her hands to get the dust off.
She pointed to one of the photos.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘The family celebrating midsummer 1992. It seems to have been the last midsummer they were all here.’
She waved a hand along the top row of pictures.
‘They were here every year from the time Karolina was born. It seems to have been just them, nobody else. Just Jakob, Marja and the girls.’
Alex took down the 1992 picture with a thoughtful expression.
‘According to Elsie and Sven Ljung, this was about the time Jakob stopped hiding the refugees,’ he said.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Fredrika. ‘But we weren’t really told why.’
‘No,’ said Alex, hanging the picture back on the wall.
His pregnant colleague raised her magic finger again and pointed.
‘This is the other time,’ she said. ‘The other one Elsie mentioned.’
Alex looked at the picture.
‘It’s the last picture Johanna’s in, taken in 2004 which just fits. A family barbecue in the garden.’
‘What happened in 2004?’ asked Alex.
‘That was when Jakob Ahlbin started talking about going back to hiding refugees. Which apparently upset Johanna a great deal. And then Sven and Jakob fell out after Sven suggested Jakob could make some money out of the operation.’
‘Christ,’ muttered Alex. ‘Capitalising on human misery, what the hell made him think that was such a great idea?’
The pine floor creaked beneath their feet as they moved to and fro along the wall.
‘This was where it started, with his refugees in the basement,’ Alex said with a lump in his throat. ‘I just can’t get my head round how, though.’
Fredrika shivered.
‘We’ve simply got to find Johanna Ahlbin now,’ she said. ‘It feels to me as if time’s running out.’
‘I feel the same,’ Alex said grimly. ‘As if we’re heading for a bloody meltdown and can’t lift a finger to save the situation.’
Fredrika did up her jacket, which she had left undone while they we
re going round the house.
‘But at least we know now when it all started,’ she said. ‘This was where the Ahlbin family fell apart and this was where someone came to get the murder weapon. It all started here, in 1992.’
Daylight was fading by the time Alex and Fredrika got back to Kungsholmen. Alex often thought how senseless it was that it got dark in the middle of the afternoon for large parts of the year. And then never got dark in the summer. There was no moderation at these latitudes, he thought.
He called his group together for a quick update before they all went home. Fredrika had to slip straight out again to take a call.
‘If nobody has any objections I’d like to start by declaring the right-wing extremist angle defunct, and dropping it,’ he began.
Nobody objected.
‘The only thing of value we’ve learnt about the extremists and the threats from Tony Svensson and Sons of the People is that they came to someone else’s attention, and that person then exploited the dispute between SP and Jakob Ahlbin to conceal his own crime,’ Alex concluded.
He was about to go on when the door burst open and Fredrika came in with a look of triumph.
‘Tell us then,’ said Alex.
Peder pulled out a chair for Fredrika to sit on, keen to have her on his side of the table rather than Joar’s. Joar pulled a face and Alex suppressed a sigh.
‘A simple blood test proved that the woman, the drug addict, can’t possibly be related to Marja and Jakob.’
‘Well, well . . .’ began Peder.
‘Which at least in theory rules out her being Karolina Ahlbin. I mean, she could be adopted or something. Not that it’s likely, but the hospital wanted to make sure it had covered itself this time. So they did what they should have done from the word go: asked for copies of her dental records. And no – the woman wasn’t Karolina Ahlbin.’
‘Bloody incredible,’ said Joar, tossing his pen onto the table.
Alex looked in his direction. He could not recall having heard him swear before. Peder sent him a look too, but not a sharp one.
He’s already seen that side of him, thought Alex. I’m the one not keeping up.
Peder’s mobile rang and he hastily switched it off.
‘My brother,’ he said. ‘He’s been ringing all day, he just keeps on.’
‘If you want a word with him do feel free to pop out,’ said Alex, who was aware of Jimmy’s situation but kept it to himself.
Peder shook his head firmly.
‘Then we know for sure that Karolina’s sister deliberately identified another woman as her sister,’ Alex said. ‘But we haven’t heard from Karolina despite the fact that the news of her parents’ deaths is splashed all over the newspapers.’
He paused.
‘So what does that tell us?’
‘Either she’s dead, or for some reason she can’t get in touch. Maybe she’s being held somewhere, against her will?’ said Peder.
‘Or she’s in on the conspiracy,’ said Joar.
Fredrika cleared her throat.
‘There’s got to be some reason for her to go along with being declared dead, as it were. We’ve been to her flat and it looks as if it’s been standing empty for weeks.’
‘But wasn’t she missed at work?’ queried Ellen, who seldom said anything at the meetings.
‘She’s a freelance journalist,’ replied Fredrika. ‘Or trying to be. She wasn’t doing very well out of it financially, if her latest tax return’s anything to go by. Which ties in quite well with the profile of her as a drug addict, incidentally.’
‘Be that as it may, someone’s gone to a lot of trouble – with or without her consent – to build up a story round her death,’ observed Joar. ‘But why?’
‘To make the next death, that is, the Ahlbins’ so-called suicide, more plausible,’ suggested Peder.
‘Or to kill two birds with one stone?’ said Fredrika, brain-storming. ‘If we go back to our working hypothesis that Jakob was murdered to keep him quiet, maybe there was good reason to keep Karolina quiet, too. Various informants have told us how close she was to her father.’
Alex sighed and kneaded his face with his hands.
‘But why Marja?’
Nobody responded.
‘Why do you also kill the wife of the man you’re trying to silence? And the argument that the murderer was taken by surprise to find her at home doesn’t hold water, because he could just have taken care of Jakob some other time.’
‘Maybe it was urgent?’ Peder said. ‘And if you want it to look like suicide, there aren’t that many places besides the victim’s own home to choose from.’
‘What about the suicide note?’ asked Fredrika. ‘How did it look? Do we think it was written in advance, or what?’
‘It was printed out from Jakob’s computer,’ replied Joar. ‘The document had been saved onto the hard disk and it was dated the same day, and saved at about the time of the murder, according to the computer.’
‘Let’s sketch ourselves a profile of the murderer,’ said Alex with a degree of excitement in his voice. ‘Someone stages the Karolina death on the Thursday. Someone goes out to Ekerö and gets into the house unnoticed to fetch the murder weapon. Someone goes round to Jakob and Marja’s flat on the Tuesday with a plan all worked out, and shoots them both in the head after first forcing Jakob to sign his own suicide note. What conclusions can we draw from all that?’
Before anyone could say anything, he started answering his own question:
‘One. The murderer knows the Ahlbin family extremely well. Two. The murderer has some level of access to the Ahlbins’ flat and their daughters’ house; he’s patently been able to get into both without any visible damage to the front doors, and it’s only in the latter case that someone could have let him or her in voluntarily. Three.’
Alex paused.
‘Three. The murderer must have known the family for some time, since he or she was able to play on both Jakob’s state of health and the fact that Karolina was the daughter he was closest to.’
He stopped.
‘Four,’ said Fredrika. ‘The murderer thought – or at least had reason to think – that Karolina Ahlbin wouldn’t come forward and reveal that she wasn’t really dead.’
The others looked at her.
‘Quite right,’ Alex said slowly, with a nod of approval, but Peder just looked confused.
‘Why didn’t they just kill her?’ queried Alex. ‘If it was vital for her to disappear, and I think we can assume it was, why not get her out of the way permanently?’
Fredrika went pale.
‘Maybe they did. Maybe that’s why we haven’t heard from her.’
Joar shook his head.
‘No, that doesn’t make sense. Why go to the bother of killing her twice? Why not do away with her straight away and then use her actual death to explain why Jakob killed his wife and then himself? To my way of thinking, it seems much more plausible that she was in on the plot.’
‘Because there was no opportunity, or because she’s part of the set-up,’ Alex declared. ‘Nothing else fits.’
‘In view of her good relations with her father,’ said Fredrika with her head on one side and a hand resting on her stomach, ‘perhaps the most likely answer is that they couldn’t get hold of her when they needed to kill her.’
‘True,’ said Alex. ‘But that still leaves us with the question: where was she then, and where is she now? Have we talked to many of her friends?’
‘We haven’t had time yet,’ said Peder, sounding tired. ‘We haven’t been treating it as a priority, because we thought she was dead, plain and simple. And it’s been quite hard to track them down; we haven’t had access to her phone records or emails. And she’s got no formal place of work, either, has she?’
‘If we tell the media we’re looking for her and issue a description, we’re going to look like idiots,’ said Alex, thinking hard about what best to do next. ‘But I wouldn’t mind betting it’ll leak out anywa
y.’
‘Not if we keep a tight lid on things,’ objected Joar.
‘If it doesn’t leak out from here, it will from the hospital,’ Alex said wryly. ‘There’s not a chance it won’t be out by the end of the evening.’
Fredrika leant forward.
‘So let’s pre-empt them,’ she said.
‘How?’
‘We hold a press conference,’ she said. ‘Then we’re first with the news. Classic media logic. If you want ownership of how a story’s presented and followed up, you have to be the one to break it.’
Alex looked in Ellen’s direction. It was going to be a long working day.
‘Can you get together with the information department and write a press release? Meanwhile, I’ll try to get some support for this among the higher echelons.’
He looked at his watch again.
‘Say we’ll hold it two hours from now, at six. Until then let’s all try to make sure nothing leaks out.’
Media training was evidently increasingly popular these days, but any opportunities of that kind had unfortunately passed Alex Recht by. So he felt pretty lost when he took his place on the platform for the meeting with the press.
He made a short statement of which the gist was: the police had received new information to prove beyond doubt that it was not Jakob and Marja Ahlbin’s daughter who had died the Thursday before they were found shot dead in their flat. It would therefore be appreciated if anyone with any information about the current whereabouts of either Karolina or Johanna Ahlbin could come forward. Neither of them was suspected of any crime; the police merely wanted their help in order to reach a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding their parents’ deaths.
‘But what about Johanna?’ asked one of the reporters. ‘How can you not suspect her of any crime? She must have known it wasn’t her sister that she came to hospital with and identified.’
Silenced: A Novel Page 25