‘That’s all right,’ she said, and tried to sound professional. ‘What I really need to know is whether Karolina’s tried to contact you in the past week.’
Silence.
‘Why are you asking?’
With one hand round the telephone receiver and the other on her stomach, Fredrika took a deep breath.
‘Because I’m afraid she’s in trouble.’
Another hesitation.
‘She rang and asked me for help last week.’
‘Did she say what the matter was?’
‘Said she couldn’t get hold of Jakob or Marja and it was going to be difficult to get home because someone seemed to have closed down her email and cancelled her flight home from Thailand.’
She must have realised, thought Fredrika. And been scared.
‘Did you know she was there? In Thailand, I mean?’
There was a short fit of coughing, and it sounded almost as if Måns had put down the receiver.
‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘We’re not in touch very often these days . . .’
But she trusted you, Måns.
‘What did she want help with?’
‘Getting hold of Jakob. And sorting out her trip home.’
She could hear him snuffling.
‘But I wasn’t, like, in a fit state to help her with anything like that.’
‘Is that what you told her?’
A sigh.
‘No. And I didn’t tell her that her dad was dead. Couldn’t bloody well bring myself to. Not on the phone.’
‘So what did you do, then?’ asked Fredrika, feeling exasperated on Karolina’s behalf.
‘I rang my brother, he’s good at getting things done,’ Måns said in a feeble voice. ‘And asked Karolina to wait. But by the time I rang back, something must have happened, because she wasn’t answering her mobile any longer.’
‘Did she send any emails?’
‘She might have – I don’t check them all that often.’
Fredrika found herself breathing in the same, strained way as Måns.
‘And what about your brother?’ she said, almost whispering, and unaccountably afraid of bursting into tears. ‘What did he do?’
‘He just rang back and told me there wasn’t much he could do, and she’d have to buy a new air ticket home. He advised me not to tell her about Jakob over the phone.’
Sensible, thought Fredrika. Sensible brother.
And she asked one last question.
‘What does your brother do?’
Her follow-up question remained hanging in the air, unsaid. Is he a druggie in rehab, too?
‘You might know him,’ said Måns. ‘He’s a policeman.’
Fredrika had to grin at her own unwarranted prejudice. But the grin froze into a grimace as Måns went on:
‘His name’s Viggo. Viggo Tuvesson.’
Feeling as if he was moving with the same momentum as a goods train on a straight stretch of track, a determined Peder strode the last few metres to the interview room where Sven Ljung was waiting. His CID colleague, Stefan Westin, who was taking the formal lead in the interview, told him the arrest had all gone very quietly. Elsie and Sven were sitting having coffee when the police rang at the door, almost as if they were expecting someone to come and fetch them. Elsie looked tearful as they took her husband out of the flat, but had not protested out loud.
‘She seemed pretty bloody resigned,’ was the way Stefan Westin put it.
Expectations of the impending interview were running high. Peder felt a distinct tightening of his chest as he entered the room and shook Sven Ljung’s hand.
He felt enormous relief that he and not Joar had been entrusted with this interview by Alex. He had to regain some of the ground he had recently lost. He also knew that within the organisation he needed people to have more confidence in him. As things stood, it was too easy to despise him and discount him. Must, must, must do better.
Stefan Westin took charge as they began the interview with Sven Ljung. Having never met Sven before, Peder was struck by how tired and old the man looked. He took a surreptitious glance at his paperwork. According to his notes, Sven was not yet even sixty-five. Still relatively young, in Peder’s eyes. But there was something about the older man. He looked sad and distressed.
As if in mourning, after some heavy, secret loss.
Stefan Westin’s voice broke into his thoughts.
‘You reported your car stolen ten days ago, Sven. Have you any idea who could have taken it?’
Sven said nothing.
Peder raised an eyebrow. He had seen that sort of silence before, during the interview with Tony Svensson. If they had gone and brought in yet another person scared into silence by God knows who, it was going to be a tough and not particularly fruitful interview.
Sven started to talk.
‘No, none at all.’
The room fell silent again.
‘But are you sure it was stolen?’ asked Stefan.
Sven nodded slowly.
‘Yes.’
‘How did you come to discover it was missing?’
‘I needed it on the Friday morning, nearly two weeks ago. And it wasn’t there in the street where I’d left it the day before.’
He suddenly looked much smaller. Deflated.
‘We’ve got compelling evidence that your car was involved in two aggravated robberies of security vans, and a murder, during the time you say it was stolen,’ announced Stefan Westin, and Sven turned pale. ‘Would you like to tell me where you were at the following times?’
Sven had to think about it when he was confronted with the various dates. He said that on each of them he had been at home in the flat with his wife. Just the two of them.
Stefan pretended to be digesting what Sven had just said.
‘Yusuf, do you know him?’ he asked, referring to the man run over at the university.
Sven shook his head.
‘No.’
The chair legs scraped across the floor as Stefan Westin pulled himself up to the table and leant across it.
‘But we know he rang you,’ he said patiently. ‘Several times.’
‘Perhaps he was just somebody you knew and that’s all there is to it?’ Peder prompted when Sven said nothing.
‘That’s right,’ said Stefan. ‘Someone you knew, who just happened to get run over by your car outside the university. I mean, these things do happen, don’t they?’
He looked at Peder and put up his hands.
Then Sven could not hold back his tears.
Silent, rather dignified tears.
Time stood still and Peder scarcely dared to move.
‘I swear I haven’t seen the car since it went missing,’ Sven said finally.
‘We believe you, Sven,’ said Stefan. ‘But we don’t buy your story that you don’t know who took it. We scarcely even buy that it was stolen at all; we think you lent it. More or less voluntarily.’
‘And reported it stolen to rule yourself out as a suspect,’ Peder went on mildly.
A voice and tone that he had previously reserved for his sons. And Jimmy.
The thought of Jimmy hit him like a bolt from the blue. Christ, how many days since they last spoke? Jimmy had been trying to get through, hadn’t he? And Peder hadn’t taken the call, or several calls in fact.
The elderly man on the other side of the table wiped the tears from his cheeks and a resolute look came over him.
‘I truly don’t know who took the car, or what for.’
‘Or you do know, but daren’t tell,’ Stefan said bluntly.
Or don’t want to, thought Peder. Out of loyalty.
‘But you ought to be able to tell us how you knew this Yusuf,’ he said out loud.
Sven considered this.
‘He got my number from some, er, mutual acquaintances. But it was a mistake. I wasn’t the one he wanted.’
Stefan and Peder pricked up their ears. Mutual acquaintances?
‘And what
are their names?’
Another hesitation.
‘Jakob Ahlbin.’
His eyes were shifty, but his voice was steady.
He’s lying so well he’s convinced himself, thought Peder.
‘Never on your life,’ said Stefan in such a hard voice that Sven blanched again.
And as Sven continued to sit there in silence, Stefan said quietly:
‘You’ll gain nothing but the odd hour or minute from stalling the interview like this. Wouldn’t it be a relief just to tell us the whole story straight out?’
Sven’s eyes filled up again.
‘It would take a damned long time,’ he said under his breath.
Peder and Stefan leant back ostentatiously in their chairs.
‘We’ve got all the time in the world, Sven.’
It began when Jakob Ahlbin talked of starting to offer refuge to illegal migrants again. Johanna Ahlbin went through the roof and Sven and Jakob fell out badly after Sven suggested he could make a lot of money out of it. Jakob called Sven a selfish fool and Sven retorted by calling Jakob cowardly and self-effacing.
‘I needed money,’ admitted Sven. ‘I always have, at least ever since Måns’ addiction got out of hand. His antisocial habits have cost us vast sums. His stealing and embezzlement have driven us to distraction, but we never had the heart to shut our door to him. Once he even managed to convince himself, and me, that he was getting better and needed some money to start a business. But that all fell apart, of course, and his mother and I didn’t know which way to turn after we lost several hundred thousand.’
He went on wearily.
‘It had never occurred to me that there was money to be made from Jakob’s activities, from hiding refugees. But I came to realise it must be possible, since the people who came over had paid so much for the trip itself, and I thought they must surely have assets with them when they got here. So I put the idea to a good friend . . . and we started up.’
He turned his head away to cough.
‘We hid the refugees in remote holiday cottages that we could rent at a cheaper price than they paid us.’
‘Did it bring in a lot of money?’ asked Peder.
‘Yes, but still not enough,’ Sven said sadly.
‘Who were you in partnership with?’ asked Stefan.
Another bit of information Sven was reluctant to reveal. And when the answer finally came, it was one they should have expected, but Peder realised he was still shocked.
‘Ragnar Vinterman.’
Stefan and Peder sat dumbfounded and wide-eyed as Sven stumbled on through his story.
‘Ragnar wanted to expand the operation because he needed even more money. He’d lost a lot on bad investments and property speculation abroad. But I felt, well, I felt I couldn’t support his new idea. So I said I was pulling out. It wasn’t just that I felt it was morally wrong, it was a damn risky proposition calling for a lot more people to be involved. Smugglers, reliable interpreters, document forgers.’
Sven lapsed into silence.
Peder sensed they were nearing a point in the story at which it was going to be harder to get any more out of Sven.
‘And how did Ragnar react when you said you wanted out?’
‘He was livid.’
‘What was the expanded operation that he was suggesting and you didn’t want to be in on?’
Anxiety and stress were taking over Sven’s body.
‘Refugee smuggling,’ he said.
Peder held his breath.
‘In a new way.’
‘What does that mean, “a new way”?’ Stefan demanded, but Peder kept his cool.
Here it comes, he was hoping. The last bit of our jigsaw puzzle.
And now Sven had started to talk, it was as if he could not stop, though he did navigate very skilfully round all the points where he should have provided more detail. Names, for example.
‘Ragnar thought it cost an appalling amount for a refugee to get from, say, Iraq or Somalia to Sweden, and that one ought to be able to lure in selected individuals by offering them an easier way of getting to Sweden.’
‘And the aim of that would be what?’ asked Stefan, looking sceptical. ‘It all sounds remarkably generous.’
A joyless laugh from Sven echoed round the interview room.
‘Generous,’ he repeated, looking irate. ‘Believe me, for a man of the cloth Ragnar Vinterman shows exceptionally poor understanding of what that word means. No, Ragnar’s plan was to entice individual refugees over here, who would get in on false documents and then commit crimes to order. Special, hand-picked individuals with a background in the military forces. Then they’d be sent home again, and no one would ever be able to catch the perpetrators of the crimes or trace their link to us.’
‘The security van robberies that have been keeping us busy in recent months,’ began Stefan, and Sven nodded eagerly.
Peder was familiar with the robberies. Minutely planned, and accompanied by violence that was in an entirely different league from the kind generally used in robberies like that.
‘I refused to be part of that hateful business, but when I saw the news reports of the robberies I realised it was up and running anyway.’
A new line creased Stefan’s brow.
‘You said the plan was to send the refugees home again?’
Sven nodded.
‘So why, in at least two cases, have they been found dead in the Stockholm area?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Sven, looking scared stiff.
‘You must have had contact with Ragnar Vinterman about this since,’ Peder persisted.
Sven nodded again.
‘But only when Ragnar came round to make sure I was going to keep my mouth shut. And when Yusuf rang me. He got my number from someone in the network who thought I was still part of it. Ragnar saw to all that.’
Something must have gone horribly wrong, Peder thought to himself as he totted up the grand total, the crescendo of violence and death that Ragnar Vinterman’s business had generated in the past two weeks.
‘What about Jakob Ahlbin, then?’ he asked. ‘Did he know any of this was going on?’
Sven met his gaze with a pained expression.
‘No, we didn’t tell him what we were starting. But I think . . .’
They waited.
‘I’m afraid he sniffed out the truth even so. And that naïve good-for-nothing evidently went to Ragnar and said he’d heard rumours that a new smuggling network had established itself in Sweden.’
‘A network supposedly much more generous than the rest,’ said Peder.
‘Exactly,’ said Sven.
‘And that set everything in motion,’ Stefan summarised.
‘I think that must be what happened,’ said Sven. ‘But I don’t know anything definitely.’
Stefan waited a moment and then tried again.
‘Who the heck was it that took your car, Sven?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘There’s not a cat in hell’s chance Ragnar did the whole thing on his own. Who else was with him?’ asked Peder.
But Sven’s mouth was sealed now, and the two interviewers realised they were coming to the end of the road.
‘If anybody’s threatened you . . .’ Peder began.
Sven closed up like a clam.
Peder decided to try a new tack.
‘According to the police report that was made at the time you and Elsie found Jakob and Marja’s bodies, an officer called Viggo Tuvesson was first on the scene. Why didn’t you tell us he was your son?’
‘It didn’t seem necessary,’ said Sven.
‘According to information we’ve recently received, Viggo went to Marja and Jakob’s after a call that you and Elsie made direct to his mobile. Why didn’t you ring the usual emergency number?’
Sven sighed.
‘It was so much easier to ring Viggo direct.’
‘Is he part of Ragnar Vinterman’s network?’ Peder asked bluntly, and Sven turn
ed pale again.
‘I can’t imagine he would be,’ Sven said quietly, but both Peder and Stefan could see he was prevaricating.
Peder decided to pile on the pressure with another question.
‘Johanna or Karolina Ahlbin, then? Were either of them part of it?’
Sven shrank even further and turned even paler.
‘Another question I can’t answer,’ he said in a muted voice.
‘And Marja,’ persisted Peder, as it dawned on him what a ghastly situation must have confronted Jakob in the last hours of his life. ‘Was she in on it, too?’
Sven merely shook his head.
‘Who was it then, Sven?’ Peder said exasperatedly. ‘Who was it that murdered Marja and Jakob, or had them murdered?’
Silence.
With some effort, Peder found a gentler way of expressing himself.
‘Are you scared, Sven?’
The older man nodded mutely.
Then he sat back in his chair, saying nothing.
There were ways of getting information even without the cooperation of Sven Ljung. Going back over the analysis of telephone data the police had been working on throughout the investigation, new contacts could be established now that more telephone numbers had been identified. Marja had rung Ragnar Vinterman a number of times, even quite late at night when it seemed unlikely they were discussing work-related matters. And when new lists of traffic to and from Ragnar Vinterman’s number finally came in after an urgent request to his phone company, it was possible to link Vinterman both to the man killed outside the university and to Muhammad in Skärholmen, victim of the Sunday evening shooting.
Two telephone numbers to unregistered pay-as-you-go accounts recurred in all the telephone lists and this, combined with the fact that neither Johanna nor Karolina Ahlbin featured among the contacts, was a source of frustration to the team.
‘That bloody Viggo Tuvesson from the Norrmalm force isn’t here either,’ thundered Alex Recht when they were all assembled in the Den with cups of coffee in their hands at about half past five that evening. ‘We’ve nothing on him beyond the fact that he’s been in touch with Tony Svensson now and then. And the fact that he’s Sven and Elsie’s son.’
‘He couldn’t give any plausible explanation for his contact with Tony Svensson though, could he?’ Fredrika added.
Silenced: A Novel Page 30