The Man Who Wasn't There

by Michael Hjorth

  ‘Right . . .’

  ‘No other vehicle involved. The car caught fire. One fatality.’

  Ursula opened the folder and removed one of the photographs that the Åre police had taken at the scene. She held it out to Arvid.

  ‘Oh, that one. Yes, we dealt with it; it was a hire car if I remember correctly.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘They didn’t want it back,’ Arvid said, returning the photograph to Ursula. ‘When the police had finished with it we brought it here.’

  Ursula gazed at the rows of piled-up cars and realised there was a faint possibility that the car was still here, something she hadn’t even dared to consider on her way up.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve still got it?’

  ‘Probably,’ Arvid said, removing his cap and scratching his head. ‘The question is where . . .’

  ‘Could you find out?’

  ‘I could.’

  Arvid put his cap back on, turned and ambled back to his office. Ursula stayed where she was, trying not to think about how contaminated the area all around her must be. All these cars, the rain and snow passing through them, washing lead, mercury, CFCs and oil into the ground. If Hammarén & Son ever decided to shut up shop, this place would be like the aftermath of Chernobyl. Once again she was interrupted by the sound of the door opening.

  ‘Found it!’ Arvid Hammarén called out; he was so pleased with himself that Ursula couldn’t help smiling.

  Five minutes later they were standing in front of the remains of the grey Toyota. It was the second car from the bottom in a pile of six, on top of what had once been a pale-blue Volvo 242. Ursula walked over and looked at the flattened, burnt-out, rusty wreck.

  ‘We used it for spare parts for a while,’ Arvid informed her, ‘but it’s just been standing there for a long time now.’

  ‘Spare parts?’ Ursula was surprised.

  ‘Yes, the engine was hardly damaged at all, oddly enough. Most of the fire damage was inside the car.’

  Ursula peered in through the broken side window and saw that Arvid was right. In spite of all the years the car had been exposed to the worst of the weather, it was still clear that the interior was completely burnt out. She walked around the car examining it as best she could given the space available, consulting the photographs in her folder at the same time. She had only glanced at them when Torkel gave them to her, but now that she looked more closely, it was obvious. The fire had started inside the car and spread outwards. The extent of the blaze was relatively restricted; the paintwork on the bonnet was burnt away only a metre or so measuring outwards from the windscreen. The rest was intact. The boot was virtually undamaged. Which wouldn’t be the case if the petrol tank had exploded, or if the contents had leaked.

  Ursula edged behind the car and crouched down. Arvid was following her activities with interest. She leaned against the boot of the Volvo so that she could examine at least part of the underside of the Toyota. She saw enough. She backed out and straightened up.

  ‘The petrol tank is smashed,’ she said, mostly to herself, as she went back to the photographs.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Ursula didn’t answer immediately. She flicked through the pictures, and immediately realised that if the tank had been smashed by a rock on the way down, for example, then the petrol would have run out underneath the car and into the ravine. The fire couldn’t possibly have started as a result of the accident. Someone wanted to make sure that the woman in the car couldn’t be identified.

  She looked through the pictures one more time; in spite of herself she was quite pleased that she had come to the scrapyard rather than Vanja. Because the car was still here, she could carry out a belated examination of the scene of the crime. The boot was open in every picture. It could of course have flown open due to the force of the collision, but Ursula was sure someone had been down to the car after it ended up in the ravine, so she decided to check it out.

  She went round to the back of the Toyota again, with Arvid hot on her heels.

  ‘Have you found something?’ he asked tentatively.

  ‘Yes.’

  The boot was still open, as far as the car on top allowed. The length of time the vehicle had been exposed to the elements made it difficult to see, but Ursula thought she could make out fine scratches around the lock that couldn’t be explained by the position of the car following the crash. It seemed likely that someone had forced it open. Ursula quickly ran through what Torkel had said to her, then turned to Arvid.

  ‘Do you know a Harald Olofsson?’

  ‘The magpie, yes.’

  Ursula thought she probably knew the answer, but she asked the question anyway.

  ‘Why do you call him that?’

  Arvid looked a little uncomfortable, as if he had already said too much.

  ‘I don’t like to speak ill of anyone . . .’

  ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘He’s never been convicted of anything,’ Arvid said apologetically. ‘So I’m not accusing him, but they do say he has sticky fingers.’

  ‘He’s a thief.’

  ‘He . . .’ Arvid seemed to be searching for a less judgemental description, but he failed to come up with something suitable. He shrugged and nodded. ‘He’s a thief. And he receives stolen goods and sells them on.’

  Ursula suddenly felt the little tingle in her stomach that was always there when she discovered something that could move a case forward. All she had to do now was to find out what Harald Olofsson had taken from the boot.

  ‘I’m taking a break.’

  Jennifer glanced up from her computer; across the table Billy pushed back his chair and closed his laptop.

  ‘OK,’ she said as he strode out of the restaurant. She wouldn’t have minded a break herself. She couldn’t decide which was more boring: trying to get hold of the right person at the airline and persuading them to send over their passenger lists, or the monotonous task of going through the lists when they did arrive. Before Torkel asked her to come to Jämtland, before she became a part of Riksmord, Jennifer had thought someone else did this kind of work for them. But there wasn’t anyone else. There was her and Billy. And now there was just her, apparently.

  She glanced at her watch. Just over two hours until dinner. A little break would be good, but then there would be no one trying to find out how Patricia Wellton entered the country if Torkel happened to walk past.

  * * *

  Billy went to his room and put the laptop down on the table by the window. He felt slightly guilty about leaving Jennifer on her own so much; first of all he had driven Sebastian and Vanja to Östersund, and now he had left her again. The problem was that he couldn’t concentrate; his mind kept going over what had happened.

  Vanja had chosen to leave the investigation because of a family problem.

  Billy assumed it must be something extremely serious, or she would never have walked away from the case and gone home. She wasn’t prepared to say what it was, which he understood perfectly. Whatever it was, no doubt she wanted to assess the situation, find out as much as she could and let it sink in before she decided whether to confide in her colleagues, and if so, how much to tell them. Again, perfectly understandable.

  It was Sebastian’s behaviour that concerned him. When Vanja said she was going, he had speedily and cheerfully decided that he was going too.

  Why?

  Torkel clearly didn’t find it strange; Sebastian didn’t have much to contribute to the investigation at this stage. That was true, but why hadn’t he left earlier? Why pretend that his departure had nothing whatsoever to do with Vanja? And, perhaps even more important, what did it really have to do with Vanja?

  Why?

  Why was Sebastian Bergman, a man who didn’t care what anyone thought of him, suddenly showing such concern for a colleague? The obvious answer would have been that he wanted to get her into bed, but even Sebastian must have known that was never going to happen.

  So, wh
y?

  Torkel might not think it was strange, but then he didn’t know what Billy knew: the link between Vanja and Sebastian. Anna Eriksson, Vanja’s mother, had been on the list of possible victims that Edward Hinde had produced.

  Why?

  Billy kept coming back to the same question, and after today’s events he couldn’t let it go any longer. He was going to have to give it some time, and hopefully find an answer to some of those ‘whys’.

  He sat down, opened the laptop and stared at the screen as he tried to marshal his thoughts.

  What did he know?

  Where should he start?

  From the beginning.

  All the women on Hinde’s list had had a sexual relationship with Sebastian. Therefore, Sebastian and Vanja’s mother must have had a sexual relationship.

  When?

  In Västerås Sebastian had given Billy an envelope with an address where Anna Eriksson had once lived: Vasaloppsvägen 17 in Hägersten. That was all Billy had had to go on. It had been returned to sender, and the sender had been Esther Bergman, Sebastian’s mother. Sebastian had been in Västerås to clear out and sell his parents’ house following the death of his mother. How old was the letter? Late Seventies – December 1979? That could fit; Anna Eriksson might have written to Esther for some reason connected to her relationship with Esther’s son. Was that why Sebastian had waited over thirty years to try to find her? If they hadn’t had any contact since then, Sebastian didn’t know that Anna was Vanja’s mother, which was why he hadn’t asked her for the address.

  Billy sighed. He wasn’t coming up with any answers, just more questions.

  Why had Sebastian wanted to get back in touch? As far as Billy could tell, Sebastian didn’t need to call his old conquests if he was feeling horny – quite the reverse, if the gossip was to be believed. Sebastian went out of his way to avoid repeat performances. So why did he want to contact Anna Eriksson, over thirty years later?

  And why had Sebastian’s mother written to her?

  Billy had seen only the envelope, not the contents, but surely there was no reason for Esther to write to one of her son’s ex-girlfriends unless they had been very close? The idea of Sebastian introducing a girl to his mother and the two of them subsequently becoming good friends sounded unlikely, to say the least. Sebastian had always made it very clear that he disliked his parents; in fact he hadn’t had anything to do with them since the age of nineteen. This was later, so perhaps the letter from Esther was a reply to a message Anna had sent her.

  But why? Why hadn’t she written to Sebastian instead?

  Billy quickly googled Sebastian and clicked on the first hit: Wikipedia. Jacob Sebastian Bergman, born 1958. There was a brief introduction, then a timeline. November 1979, the University of North Carolina on a Fulbright award. Back in Sweden 1983.

  Billy leaned back in his chair and went through his chain of circumstantial evidence, looking for the weak points. There weren’t any.

  Sebastian sleeps with Anna Eriksson in 1979 (or earlier). In 1979 Anna tries to get in touch with Sebastian, but he has moved to the USA. She writes to his mother. Esther writes back, but the letter is returned. She keeps the letter, and Sebastian finds it. The contents make him want to track down Anna Eriksson.

  Why?

  What was in the letter?

  It must have been important for Sebastian to think it was worth searching for her after thirty years. Had they ever met? Billy couldn’t remember Vanja or Sebastian ever mentioning that he knew her mother.

  So why? Why does a woman write to a man with whom she has had a relationship?

  To tell him she’s unhappy and she wants him back?

  To tell him she’s happy, just to hurt him?

  Would Sebastian’s mother reply to something like that? Why reply at all? Why not just send Anna’s letter on to Sebastian in the USA? Then again, if Sebastian had broken all contact with his parents, perhaps she didn’t know where he was either.

  To tell him she has an STI?

  To tell him she’s pregnant?

  Billy stopped dead. Stared at what he had jotted down. What did he actually know, apart from his theories about the letter?

  He knew that Sebastian had offered to change places with Vanja when Hinde had abducted her.

  He knew that Sebastian had fought hard to rejoin Riksmord.

  He knew that Sebastian had decided to go back to Stockholm with Vanja when she had a family problem.

  And he knew something else: Vanja was born in July 1980.

  There was a knock on the door, and Billy gave a start. Before he had time to say anything the door opened and Jennifer was standing there, looking very pleased with herself.

  ‘I’ve found Patricia Wellton.’

  Lennart walked into the bingo hall on Sankt Eriksgatan. They had certainly freshened the place up. Gone were the fluorescent lights and the scruffy pine tables covered in cigarette burns that had once dominated the room. The walls had been repainted, and an attractively patterned carpet toned beautifully with the modern furniture in the café area. Lots of small spotlights brought out the contrast between the round white tables and the dark green walls. It looked more like a trendy restaurant or a night club than a bingo hall, as long as you ignored the bingo machines standing in long rows in the middle of the room. With their illuminated, brightly coloured screens and the players sitting in front of them in comfortable armchairs, concentrating hard, at first glance they looked like some kind of communications centre, or the control room in a sci-fi series. Run by really old people. The hall might have had a facelift, but the clientele was exactly the same. In fact, they looked even older, even more bent, grey, still stinking of smoke. Lennart was probably the youngest person in the room. His only competition was the man in the polo shirt sitting up on the podium, calling out the numbers in his nasal voice as the machine beside him spat out the balls. It was an unusual feeling, being the youngest. These days he often felt old compared to the other customers in cafés and restaurants around Stockholm, but not here. In fact he was getting younger by the minute. He suspected that was exactly what Anitha liked about it; it made her feel young again.

  Lennart sat down towards the back of the room, hidden from the street by a huge cardboard sign proclaiming bingo’s magical ability to make the time fly while providing the opportunity to have fun and win big. He looked at his machine and realised that if he had inserted money and lit up the screen in front of him, he would have been able to cross off one of the numbers that had just been called out.

  Two and four, twenty-four.

  For a moment he toyed with the idea of actually playing, but then he saw her walk in. As usual she was wearing a brown skirt and a jumper that was far too thick. To hide the fact that she was overweight, he assumed. Her brown hair was caught up in a bun. Her face was well made up, although slightly overdone, and the colours were a little too strong. She was trying to look stylish, but it was as if she didn’t really know how. Anitha Lund in a nutshell, he thought. She wanted so much, but didn’t quite know how to get there.

  She had been some kind of human resources officer with the National Police Board, but had fallen out with just about everybody. She had been moved several times before taking up her present post as administrator responsible for staff development. It sounded good, but meant next to nothing. She made a note of applications as they came in, then passed them on to someone who actually made the decisions. Lennart had some sympathy for her; she was bitter, and her life hadn’t turned out the way she wanted. She was the archetypal misery-guts, the kind of person who took out her disappointment on everyone around her who had done better. Who thought that everything was someone else’s fault. Who saw faults in every system, but none in herself.

  This was often the case when it came to those who were prepared to leak information to the press. At the beginning of his career as a journalist, Lennart had thought that people revealed anomalies because they had morals and wanted to prevent wrongdoing, but unfortunat
ely that wasn’t the case. Most sources had much simpler motives: money, perceived injustices, and revenge. It wasn’t pretty, but it was true.

  Anitha spotted him and he smiled at her as she sat down beside him.

  ‘Hi, Anitha.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Can I ask if you come here in your free time too?’

  She put down her pale-brown handbag on the shelf in front of the screen and looked at him.

  ‘It has been known. This is a bit like my job, you see. Someone calls something out. I tick it off. They call out again. I tick it off. The only difference is that here I might actually win something now and again.’

  She stared at the screen as if she were thinking of playing.

  ‘Perhaps I ought to give it a try one day,’ Lennart said, trying to maintain the friendly tone, but Anitha got straight to the point.

  ‘What’s so bloody important?’

  ‘An asylum case that’s been classified. Two Afghan men who disappeared. Nobody knows where they are, and nobody seems to care.’

  ‘The Security Police obviously cared.’

  Lennart turned to face her. The thought had occurred to him, but there were other agencies that could mark an investigation as classified.

  ‘The Security Police . . . what makes you think it’s Säpo?’

  ‘Who else would it be? If they were Afghans I assume they were Muslims. You know perfectly well that Säpo are involved if it’s serious. A threat to national security and so on.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me what Säpo do,’ Lennart said with a smile.

  ‘No, but you need me, don’t you?’ Anitha replied with a sudden sharpness in her voice. ‘In which case you can damn well listen to what I say. Or are we done here?’

  She sat back in her chair, emphasising the fact that she had the upper hand.

  Bloody hell, she was complicated.

  ‘Of course I’m listening,’ Lennart said. ‘Sorry,’ he added, in case his apologetic tone wasn’t clear enough.

  Anitha leaned forward again. She looked a little calmer, but Lennart knew that she could flare up at any moment.