Silenced: A Novel

by Kristina Ohlsson

  Since she seemed to have come to a halt, Alex took up the thread.

  ‘But it didn’t work out,’ he said.

  Johanna Ahlbin shook her head.

  ‘No, it didn’t. I got dragged into Karolina’s plans.’

  Fredrika shifted uneasily in her seat, still with an overwhelming sense that they had not been given the full story.

  ‘So what happened, Johanna?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Everything was completely blown apart,’ she said, suddenly looking very tired. ‘Karolina . . .’

  She broke off again, but composed herself to go on.

  ‘Karolina had very cleverly sold herself as the good, loyal daughter. The one who always took such an interest in what Dad was doing, but it was all totally fake, so I found I couldn’t even pretend to be interested in all that stuff.’

  ‘In what sense do you mean it was fake?’ asked Fredrika, remembering all the statements they had had about Karolina sharing her father’s outlook.

  ‘She put it on, year after year,’ Johanna replied with a dark look fixed on Fredrika. ‘Claimed she felt passionately about Dad’s campaigns and shared his underlying values. But none of it was true. In actual fact, the so-called help she gave Dad and his friends was simply that she gave the police anonymous tip-offs about where to find the migrants and how the smugglers operated. To get them here.’

  The room suddenly felt very cold. Fredrika’s brain was racing as it tried to take in the picture being painted for her. Was this where police officer Viggo Tuvesson came into the investigation?

  ‘I tried, countless times, to tell Dad that Karolina wasn’t a scrap better than me. That she was actually a worse person, because she engaged in lies and deception. But he wouldn’t listen to what I told him. As usual.’

  Johanna looked grimly resolute. Fredrika almost felt like asking why she wasn’t crying, but refrained. Perhaps the grief was all too private.

  ‘What about your mother, then?’ asked Alex, and instantly had Fredrika’s full attention.

  ‘She was somewhere in the middle,’ Johanna said rather evasively.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘In the middle, between me and Dad.’

  ‘In terms of her views, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did Karolina have against refugees?’ Fredrika put in, and then corrected herself. ‘I mean what does Karolina have against refugees?’

  It was plain to see the effect on Johanna of this revelation, already released to the media, that Karolina was now definitely known to be alive.

  She said nothing for a minute, and the words when they did come had all the more impact.

  ‘Because she was raped by one of the refugees Dad was hiding in the basement of our house at Ekerö.’

  ‘Raped?’ Alex repeated in a slightly sceptical tone. ‘We haven’t found any reports of a rape in our records.’

  Johanna shook her head.

  ‘It was never reported. It couldn’t be, Mum and Dad said. It would have exposed their whole operation.’

  ‘So what did they do?’ Fredrika asked tentatively, not really sure she wanted to know.

  ‘They dealt with it the way they dealt with everything else,’ Johanna said sharply. ‘Within the family. And then Dad wound up his operation at the speed of light, you could say.’

  Fredrika thought back to her visit to Ekerö, and could see that Alex was doing the same. The photographs on the walls, dated up to a certain midsummer in the early ’90s. Johanna fading from the pictures like a ghost. Why Johanna and not Karolina?

  ‘Can you put a date on the event you’ve just told us about?’ Alex asked, though he already knew what the answer would be.

  ‘Midsummer 1992.’

  They both nodded, each jotting down a note. The picture was getting clearer, but it was still not in focus.

  ‘And what happened after that?’ asked Fredrika.

  Slightly less weighed down by the burden of all she had to tell, Johanna appeared to relax a little.

  ‘The Ekerö house was anathema to us after that; none of us liked being there. It wasn’t just Dad’s hiding of fugitives that stopped, it was as if the whole family died. We were never there to celebrate midsummer again; we would just go for the odd week or weekend. Mum and Dad talked about selling it, but in the end they didn’t.’

  ‘And how was Karolina?’

  For the first time in the interview, an angry look came into Johanna’s face.

  ‘She must have been feeling absolutely awful, as you’d expect, but it was as if she was pretending it hadn’t happened. Before all that, it was actually the other way round: I was the favourite and she was the one who always wanted not to be part of our family. After the rape I took her side, because I didn’t think any good that Dad’s activities did could ever outweigh what happened to her. So you can imagine how astonished I was to find that Karolina seemed to think it was all okay.’

  ‘You must have been terribly bitter,’ Alex prompted cautiously.

  ‘Dreadfully. And lonely. Suddenly it was as though it was my fault the family had split apart, mine and not Dad’s or Mum’s. Or Karolina’s, for that matter.’

  ‘What felt most frustrating?’ Fredrika asked.

  ‘What I was telling you before,’ Johanna said mutedly. ‘That although Karolina was changed by what happened, and openly admitted to me that she despised the migrants who came to Sweden, she pretended something else to Dad and Mum.’

  And not just to them, Fredrika thought to herself, but to family friends and acquaintances as well.

  ‘So you distanced yourself from the family, so to speak?’

  Johanna nodded.

  ‘Yes, that was the way it went. I couldn’t bear the hypocrisy. And I didn’t miss any of them, either. Not much, anyway. And definitely not after Dad started talking about taking in refugees again, and I was the only one in the family who seemed to mind.’

  Fredrika and Alex exchanged looks, unsure how to proceed. Their impression of Karolina had changed radically in the course of less than an hour. But they were still far from through with this, they both knew that.

  It was at that point Fredrika registered the tattoo on Johanna’s wrist, almost hidden by her watch. A flower. Or to be more precise, a daisy. Where had that motif featured recently? Then she recalled the dried flower, the sole ornament on one of the bedroom walls.

  Johanna tracked Fredrika’s gaze and tried to conceal the tattoo by moving her watch strap. But Fredrika’s curiosity was already aroused.

  ‘What does the daisy mean?’ she asked bluntly.

  ‘It’s a reminder.’

  Johanna’s voice was thick as she said it, her expression ambiguous.

  ‘Karolina’s got one, too,’ she added.

  ‘A reminder of what?’

  ‘Of our sisterhood.’

  A sisterhood so charged that its symbol had to be hidden under a wristwatch, Fredrika reflected.

  It was Alex who broke the silence.

  ‘Johanna, you’ve got to tell us the rest now. You said you were taking five weeks off work to go to Spain, but Karolina’s plans got in the way. What happened?’

  As lithely as a ballet dancer, Johanna straightened her back.

  ‘You want to know why I identified a dead person as my sister although I knew it wasn’t her?’

  ‘We certainly do.’

  ‘I can give you a simple answer: because she asked me to.’

  ‘Who asked you to?’

  ‘Karolina.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Why?’

  Tears came into Johanna’s eyes for the first time in the encounter. Fredrika felt something akin to relief when she saw them.

  ‘Because she’d got herself into such a hellishly difficult situation that she literally needed to disappear off the face of the earth. That was how she put it, anyway.’

  ‘Did she give you any more details?’

  ‘No, but God knows I kept asking her to. Over and over
again. But she wouldn’t answer, just said her past was catching up with her and she’d realised what she had to do. She explained her plan, the idea that she’d die without really dying. My job was to ring for an ambulance and then identify that druggie as my sister. And leave the country. So then I went to Spain.’

  ‘How did you know she was a drug addict, the woman who died in place of your sister?’

  ‘Karolina told me. And you could tell by the look of her. That she’d put herself through it.’

  ‘Was she still alive when you got to the flat?’

  ‘It didn’t look like it, but she must have been. The ambulance crew tried to save her.’

  ‘That must have scared you stiff.’

  Johanna made no reply.

  ‘Why did you help her with such a spectacular stunt as staging her own death if she wasn’t prepared to tell you why?’ asked Alex.

  A faint smile crept across Johanna’s impassive face.

  ‘The bond between sisters can be stretched to any length without breaking. It never occurred to me she could be referring to that midsummer episode when she said the past was catching up with the family. But once I realised it was, I stayed on longer in Spain.’

  Uncertainty made Fredrika grip her pen even harder.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  As if Fredrika had said something completely insane, Johanna leant across the table.

  ‘But how else could it all fit together? Why else would she have done what she did?’

  The line between Alex’s eyebrows deepened to a crater.

  ‘What is it you think she did?’

  ‘I think she had Mum and Dad murdered. And now she’s going to come for me, as well. To punish us for not being there when her life was destroyed in the meadow outside our holiday house.’

  ‘Do you think she needs protection?’ asked Fredrika as the lift doors parted and they emerged into the team corridor.

  ‘Hard to say,’ muttered Alex. ‘Bloody hard to say.’

  ‘At least we know now that we were right, you and I,’ Fredrika said, almost gaily.

  Alex looked at her.

  ‘About it all starting in the holiday house at Ekerö, like we said.’

  Alex glanced at his watch. Time had flown, as usual. It was well past lunch and Peder would be off to the national CID to take part in the interview of Sven Ljung. From where he stood, Alex shouted to everyone to come to the Den and make it snappy. Nobody dared drag their feet at the sound of his order, though Fredrika headed for the staff room at a semi-jog to grab a sandwich on the way.

  Of course, thought Alex. The woman’s about to have a baby, of course she’s got to eat.

  ‘What have we got, to corroborate her story?’ asked Joar once Alex had filled them in on what Johanna had said.

  ‘Not much,’ admitted Alex. ‘On the other hand, we haven’t got much to contradict her version, either.’

  ‘Are we remanding her in custody?’ asked Peder. ‘I mean for obstructing the course of our enquiries, or for her part in Therese Björk’s death, however minor it was?’

  Alex sighed.

  ‘We’re not sure enough of our facts yet,’ he answered. ‘As for the obstruction, she can explain that by saying she was too scared of what her sister might do once she found out her parents had been killed. And as far as the misidentification’s concerned, we haven’t enough to go on as things stand. Johanna couldn’t even tell us how Therese Björk died; she claims Therese was already there when she got to her sister’s flat.’

  ‘And that’s precisely where we ought to be able to make progress,’ Fredrika interrupted. ‘An individual who as far as we know had nothing at all to do with either Karolina or Johanna was picked up by ambulance from Karolina’s flat and later died in hospital. That makes Karolina’s flat a potential crime scene. How soon can we get access to it?’

  Joar gave Fredrika a cautious smile.

  ‘Quick thinking,’ he said. ‘But unfortunately I don’t think a CSI in Karolina’s flat’s going to yield much. We’ve already been there and trampled all over any potential evidence when were looking for a key to the Ekerö house.’

  ‘More to the point, Johanna followed her sister’s instructions to go back to the flat and clean up after she’d wrongly identified Therese Björk,’ Alex added, reminding Fredrika of the latter stages of their interview with Johanna.

  ‘Did Johanna know Karolina was in Thailand?’ asked Joar.

  Alex nodded.

  ‘Yes, but she didn’t know why. When we told her that her sister was wanted for drug offences, her guess was that Karolina needed the money to pay whoever she hired to kill her parents.’

  The room went quiet.

  ‘It really feels as if we should be interviewing Karolina Ahlbin as well,’ said Peder.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alex, and took a deep breath. ‘I’d go so far as to say that until we can find out what Karolina’s been up to these past few weeks, we’re stuck.’

  Fredrika looked as though she had something to say, but she refrained.

  ‘Was she able to tell you anything about her mother’s role in all this?’ Joar was curious to know.

  ‘Not a word,’ Alex said.

  ‘Well then, we wait eagerly to hear what the Sven Ljung interview produces,’ said Joar, squinting at Peder. ‘Maybe that’s going to shed some light on Marja’s role.’

  Fredrika overcame her indecision and said:

  ‘Erik Sundelius. Jakob’s doctor.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Alex.

  ‘He implied Johanna was mentally disturbed.’

  ‘So he did,’ said Alex. ‘But there we have a man who forgot to impart various bits of information about himself, as we know. So I’m not sure how much weight we should give to what emerged from our interview with him.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Fredrika. ‘But several people told us Johanna wasn’t well, so we can’t be entirely sure.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of whether either Karolina or Johanna is sick enough to have her own parents murdered.’

  When she was younger, Fredrika had often asked herself if she would have preferred having a sister to the brother she had grown up with. As a child she had sobbed out loud when she read Astrid Lindgren’s story My Sister Dearest, and in adult life she had often wished she had a sister to exchange thoughts and ideas with. Poring over her notes from the interview with Johanna brought to mind all the myths surrounding the special bond that was said to exist between any pair of sisters.

  We didn’t know anything about Johanna, thought Fredrika, feeling a rising sense of fascination. And just as our focus was shifting onto her, she sought us out by herself.

  She returned briefly to one of her earlier theories, namely that the sisters had collaborated in the murder of their parents.

  Motives. Separately, each sister had a motive, but if they were jointly guilty, the police lacked any clear idea of a motive.

  Karolina’s motive, as Johanna had described it, was not hard to understand. What a broken person you must be after an experience like that. Undoubtedly broken enough to manipulate those around you the way Johanna had described.

  But Fredrika was still dubious: surely someone would have seen through her? The Ljungs, the Reverend Vinterman or the psychiatrist. Or her own parents, for that matter. Hadn’t anyone ever questioned her loyalty to her father?

  She gave an involuntary shudder. There was no limit to people’s imagination when it came to hurting other people. A new picture of Karolina Ahlbin was emerging. A picture that encompassed a set of problems quite different from the one Fredrika initially had in mind. Johanna being slowly erased from the family picture, and finally losing everything and everyone. A young woman who might be in desperate need of protection.

  She thumbed the latest fax from Bangkok. There was nothing to indicate that Karolina Ahlbin had left Thailand, which was reassuring. But if she was the one behind the double murder of Jakob and Marja, she clearly had the capacity to contract killers from a
distance.

  Either she is as disturbed as her sister Johanna made her out to be, thought Fredrika. Or else . . .

  She put down the sheet of paper and let her eyes stray to the window and the snow falling outside.

  Or else Karolina, too, was a victim of the conspiracy that led to the murder of her father.

  And her mother.

  But why?

  Fredrika anxiously checked the clock. It was nearly two, and Spencer had still not been in touch.

  She felt she was being assailed by difficulties from all sides. She was aware of a fleeting sense of impending danger.

  We’re missing something here, she thought, trying not to let the all too familiar feeling of fatigue get the better of her. And it’s something big, I’m damned sure of it.

  She swallowed hard, feeling anxiety contract her windpipe. She ought to go home and leave the case to people with the proper stamina and tempo in their bodies. Go home, go to bed and sleep. Or play some music.

  As her thoughts went to her violin, her arm felt mute and tender. She knew there was not a single part of her body that she was not prepared to defy.

  When the phone on her desk rang, she virtually sprang to attention.

  ‘Fredrika Bergman.’

  Silence, then a wheezing intake of breath. Then Fredrika knew who it was.

  ‘Måns Ljung?’ she asked, trying not to sound too eager.

  More chesty breathing, someone saying something disjointed. Then suddenly much clearer.

  ‘You rang about Lina?’

  ‘That’s right, and I’m very glad you were able to ring me back.’

  A strained laugh at the other end.

  ‘Did Mum tell you I wouldn’t be up to talking on the phone?’

  Yes, thought Fredrika. And I was so stupid that I bought it, without further ado.

  It was Elsie’s comments that had made the police decide against interviewing her and Sven’s son Måns, even though he had been Karolina’s boyfriend for several years.

  ‘I’m an in-patient at a so-called rehabilitation clinic, but if it’s to do with Lina, I’ve always got time to talk. Sorry if I sound a bit ropey . . . I’ve got some sort of infection.’

  Fredrika could not have cared less about his state of health. The important thing was that he was capable of holding a conversation.