The Man Who Wasn't There

by Michael Hjorth

  However, the thought of the rubbish she was consuming frightened her, made her feel worse among the stick-thin perfect bodies all around her. So she started making herself sick now and again to stop herself from putting on weight. At first it didn’t seem like such a bad idea; she didn’t do it often, and in fact it was the perfect combination: she could consume all that deliciousness, then get rid of it a little while later.

  But it escalated, until in the end she was thinking only of food, and how quickly she could bring it back up. Nothing else mattered.

  One day she read an article about eating disorders in Dagens Nyheter. It was about bulimia. She had merely glanced through the other articles in the series, but suddenly she recognised herself. She read about the side effects, the possibility that menstruation could become irregular and stop. Tooth enamel could be severely damaged. She had run to the bathroom and nervously checked the back of her front teeth, which was apparently where the erosion started. She couldn’t feel anything abnormal with her tongue, but then again she didn’t know how it was supposed to feel. However, she hadn’t had a period for three months. She made herself a pile of sandwiches and read the article again, with an increasing sense of familiarity. Everything fitted. Then she threw up and burst into tears.

  She was sick.

  It wasn’t just that she didn’t fit in, she was sick, and very few people managed to recover from that particular illness.

  She confided in Valdemar, went to his office. She still didn’t know where she had got the strength from, because she was so ashamed of herself, but it was Valdemar she had chosen to tell. He had taken the rest of the day off, and they had gone for a walk. She had felt faint and dizzy, but he had got it all out of her, gently, step by step. When it really mattered he had stepped forward and been the father she had always hoped he would be. It was wonderful.

  Two weeks later he arranged for her to move to a new school. It was already late in the summer term, so she started at Södra Latin in the autumn. He fixed everything. A two-week retreat during the summer for girls with bulimia, to provide her with the tools to fight it. He tracked down the best therapists, found someone new if she didn’t like the person she was working with.

  He had healed her, with his closeness and his honesty.

  That was the picture she couldn’t reconcile with the man she had just met in that dingy, cramped room. When she was seventeen she had revealed a painful secret to him; it had taken courage and absolute trust on her part. Why couldn’t he do the same at fifty-five? When it came to the crunch, he had chosen to stay locked in the bathroom, as it were.

  That made her very sad. This wasn’t a betrayal, or a humiliation. It was much worse. She felt as if she had been completely abandoned.

  From now on Vanja would have to cope on her own. For real. The security of knowing that he was always there when she needed him was gone.

  Dad.

  He would never again be there for her in the same way.

  Never.

  Vanja got to her feet, her shoes sticking to the stinking, slushy mess. She just wanted to get out of there. Everything disgusted her: the room, the smell, the taste.

  She wondered whether to go and see Anna, but that felt too much like hard work. Anna would need a lot of support, and she would ask endless questions. Support that Vanja was incapable of giving right now, and questions she couldn’t answer. Anna had plenty of friends, women who were closer to her than Vanja was. They would have to take care of her tonight if necessary.

  She washed her face, rinsed her shoes and trousers, sluiced out her mouth. She realised now how important the FBI training was; more important than ever. It was no longer just a training programme and an opportunity; it was a journey she had to make. Now that she was alone.

  It was time to grow up, for real.

  Vanja would go as soon as she heard from the selection committee, before the course actually started. She would just go. Leave Riksmord. Leave everything. Stand on her own two feet.

  It was time.

  Torkel was the last to arrive at the meeting again. This was starting to become a habit, and this time he wasn’t just late, he was tired and bad-tempered as well. First of all, Vanja’s call had alarmed him, but he had done as she asked and spoken to the prosecutor. Then Axel Weber had called again. He had linked the car crash and the deceased woman to the discovery of the bodies on the mountain, and wanted to know what the connection was. Even if Torkel had known he wouldn’t have told Weber, of course, but the very fact that the journalist seemed to know exactly what they were doing irritated the hell out of him. However, it didn’t sound as if he knew that it was a hire car, or who was driving, or that Patricia Wellton had had a false ID. Fortunately Weber didn’t know what Ursula had discovered at Harald Olofsson’s place either; if he did find out, the press would explode with all kinds of speculation. Torkel had tried to get hold of Hedvig Hedman, but without success. Irrespective of what was going on with the complaint to the Attorney General, she needed to make sure that her team kept their mouths shut in future.

  ‘Ursula,’ he said as soon as he sat down. Might as well get down to business; it had been a long day.

  ‘I went through what we found at Olofsson’s as best I could before I sent it off to Linköping,’ Ursula said as she opened up her laptop. ‘The notes are in our shared folder, and there’s a printout here if you’d prefer.’ Jennifer and Torkel leaned forward and took a copy, while Billy opened up the folder on his computer.

  ‘As you know it was the contents of the handbag that proved most interesting; I found the remains of a driving licence issued to a Liz McGo-something in an inside pocket.’

  ‘Have you got anywhere with the name?’ Torkel broke in, turning to Billy.

  ‘Yes and no. Do you want me to report back now?’

  ‘No. Carry on, Ursula.’

  ‘There wasn’t much else in the handbag; it was inside the car, and sustained more fire damage than the rucksacks. Anything that didn’t burn was partially or entirely melted by the heat. As you can see I was able to identify ordinary items: make-up, a hairbrush, keys and a wallet containing the remains of notes, both kronor and dollars, plus a few Swedish coins. There were also parts of what appear to be plastic cards, but they are too badly damaged for me to get anything from them. It’s possible the lab might have more success.’

  ‘And what about the rucksacks?’

  ‘They were in the boot, and were relatively undamaged. Harald Olofsson’s attempt to destroy them caused only superficial damage to the exterior. They contained mainly clothes, belonging to an adult male, an adult female, and two children – a boy and a girl. Bullet holes and blood on some items, including the children’s clothing.’

  ‘The bodies on the mountain,’ Jennifer said.

  Ursula nodded. ‘Sheets, pillowcases, toiletries, a few toys and children’s books. In Swedish. That’s all.’

  ‘Fingerprints?’ Billy wondered.

  Ursula shook her head. ‘The fatty acids have disappeared after such a long time.’

  ‘No names or anything else that could identify them?’ Torkel asked, although of course he would have known if Ursula had made a breakthrough like that. Not surprisingly, she shook her head again.

  ‘Not that I could find. Our colleagues at the lab in Linköping have got completely different methods at their disposal when it comes to examining surfaces; let’s hope they find something.’

  ‘Is it worth publicising the clothes, see if anyone recognises them?’

  ‘We can try, but there was nothing striking; they just seemed like perfectly ordinary clothes.’

  ‘No names in the children’s clothing?’ Jennifer asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But don’t people usually put names in their kids’ clothes?’

  Ursula thought about it. She had never put ‘Bella’ in a single item of clothing. She had read the notes from nursery and school asking her to do so, but she had always ignored them. Had Mikael obliged? She thought
not; after all, she had washed her daughter’s clothes on a number of occasions, and surely she would have noticed. Wouldn’t she?

  ‘Did you look at the labels?’

  Ursula tore herself away from thoughts of her ex-husband and her daughter and turned to Jennifer. She’s new, she told herself. New and ambitious, and she means well. Be nice.

  ‘Yes, I looked at the labels,’ she said patiently. ‘All the labels, in fact, including those in the items belonging to the adults—’

  ‘The sheets,’ Torkel interrupted the exaggeratedly polite reply. He really must mention to Jennifer that it wasn’t a good idea to question Ursula’s professional expertise too overtly. ‘You don’t have sheets if you’re camping.’

  ‘You do at hostels,’ Jennifer said.

  ‘We’ve checked all the hostels,’ Billy said.

  ‘Check them again.’

  ‘No sleeping bags, no tent, nothing to cook on. It doesn’t look like a camping trip to me,’ Ursula said.

  Torkel sighed. Where the hell had these people come from? Where had they been? What were they doing out on the mountain? Where did they die? Who were they? He felt as if the team didn’t know any more now than when they arrived in Jämtland. He nodded to Billy and Jennifer, hoping they would have something to contribute.

  ‘When we got the new driving licence from Ursula, we split the tasks between us,’ Billy began as he got up and went over to the whiteboard. He moved the pictures of the grave scene to make room for a timeline.

  ‘Jennifer carried on with Patricia Wellton, because she had found her in the passenger lists, so it’s best if we start there.’

  He picked up a black marker pen, and Jennifer looked down at her notes.

  ‘Patricia Wellton flew from Frankfurt to Stockholm on the afternoon of 29 October 2003. She landed at Arlanda just after five, and we assume she took the night train to Östersund.’

  ‘How did she get to Frankfurt?’ Torkel asked.

  ‘We don’t know, but she had also booked a ticket from Trondheim to Oslo on 31 October. She didn’t catch that flight, and that’s all we have on her.’

  ‘Well done,’ Torkel congratulated her. ‘Börje Dahlberg hasn’t managed to find anything on a Patricia Wellton yet; she isn’t on any database, which suggests it’s an identity she hadn’t used before.’

  ‘Which brings us to Liz McGo-something,’ Billy took over. ‘As the driving licence was found in Wellton’s car, we assumed they were connected, and we started in Frankfurt. A Liz McGordon arrived there on 28 October.’

  Torkel straightened up as he felt a surge of fresh energy. This was really good news. Another person, someone they had already traced to the same city at the same time as one of their suspects. He looked at the board and Billy’s timeline.

  ‘The day before Patricia Wellton left Frankfurt,’ he said.

  ‘Yes . . .’

  Billy didn’t look anywhere near as pleased as he ought to be, Torkel thought.

  ‘I think you’re going to have to call Börje again,’ Billy said almost apologetically. ‘Liz McGordon doesn’t exist either. At least not this Liz McGordon.’

  ‘What the fuck!’ Torkel’s shoulders dropped as he tried to work out what this meant. Two women. Two fake identities. He’d never known anything like it. What was going on here?

  ‘Where did she come from?’ Ursula asked.

  ‘Washington DC,’ Jennifer said, as Billy carried on writing. ‘With Delta Airlines. We have no information regarding onward travel from Frankfurt, but she also had a return ticket – from Oslo on 1 November.’

  ‘So how was she going to get there?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  Torkel pushed aside the disappointment and weariness, which he had allowed himself to feel just for a moment. He got up and started pacing around the room.

  ‘So, Liz McGordon flies from the USA to Frankfurt on the twenty-eighth. Patricia Wellton flies from Frankfurt to Stockholm on the twenty-ninth, then travels on to Östersund where she hires a car on the thirtieth. On the thirty-first she’s supposed to fly from Trondheim to Oslo, and the following day Liz McGordon has a ticket booked from Oslo back to Washington.’

  He stopped dead and quickly checked what Billy had written on the whiteboard.

  ‘Patricia Wellton and Liz McGordon are the same person.’

  There was a silence as Torkel’s words sank in.

  ‘But Patricia or Liz, or whatever her name is, never reaches Trondheim, because her car crashes and someone sets fire to it,’ he went on. ‘In the boot are the rucksacks which probably belonged to four of the people whose bodies we found on the mountain. What does that tell us?’

  ‘That she shot those four people,’ Jennifer said.

  ‘Or that she was involved, at any rate,’ Ursula corrected her.

  ‘We didn’t find a gun in the car.’

  It sounded like a statement, but Torkel glanced enquiringly at Ursula, who confirmed it with another shake of the head.

  ‘Olofsson might have taken it,’ Billy suggested.

  ‘I think he would have told us,’ Ursula said.

  ‘Perhaps she’d already got rid of it,’ Jennifer interjected. ‘She seems very professional.’

  To his delight, Torkel could actually feel the change in the atmosphere. Everyone was leaning forward, mentally on their toes. Everything that was said felt relevant, responses came quickly. Theories were tested, accepted or discarded. Liz McGordon might not exist, but her appearance had breathed new life into the investigation. The important thing now was to hold fast and to keep on trying to untangle the threads.

  ‘So if we take it that Liz and Patricia are the same woman, she came to Europe from the USA, changed identity, travelled up to Jämtland and shot four people whom we assume are a family, and was planning to return to the USA. All within five days? She was spending less than twenty-four hours in this area. Those four people were out in the middle of nowhere. How did she find them?’

  ‘She must have known exactly where they were.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Maybe she knew them?’ Jennifer said. ‘They could have been Americans.’

  ‘There were Swedish children’s books in one of the rucksacks,’ Billy pointed out.

  ‘But no Swedes fitting the profile are missing.’

  They all looked at the map Billy had put up earlier. It really was a huge area. Jennifer was struck by an idea, and had to suppress the urge to put up her hand.

  ‘Perhaps they were camping with someone who told Patricia exactly where they were. He or she might have helped to kill them and to dig the grave.’

  Silence once more. A fresh theory leading to fresh thoughts as they all considered what Jennifer had said, trying to find the strengths and weaknesses.

  More than one perpetrator.

  ‘That would explain why we can’t find a tent,’ Jennifer went on. ‘Patricia took the rucksacks and her collaborator took the tent.’

  ‘And did what?’ Ursula asked. There was something about Jennifer’s idea that didn’t work. ‘Took off somewhere else?’

  ‘They could have left the mountain together, then for some reason they had an argument on the way to Trondheim. The other person killed Patricia and continued the journey alone.’

  ‘In which case we should have found the tent in the car. Why would he or she take the tent and leave the rucksacks?’

  Jennifer fell silent. Ursula had a point. Billy stepped in.

  ‘Someone killed her, we’re pretty sure of that. If it wasn’t her pal from the mountain—’

  ‘If she had one,’ Ursula interjected.

  ‘Then it must have been someone else,’ Billy said, ignoring the interruption.

  ‘A third perpetrator.’ Ursula couldn’t keep the scepticism out of her voice.

  The energy was gone as quickly as it had arrived. It happened sometimes, when things got too diverse, too big. When all at once everything seemed possible, nothing was credible. Torkel suddenly missed Vanja. She was a
bsolutely the best in these situations. She made sure they kept focus, picked out what was important, put everything else to once side. She could hold a line and take everyone with her. He understood afresh what an important part of the team she was. He hoped she was OK; he also hoped her father turned out to be innocent, and that she would soon be back.

  ‘One, two, three perpetrators; a tent, no tent, no gun. Shall we get back to what we actually know?’ he said in attempt to get the discussion back on track.

  His suggestion was followed by a worrying silence.

  ‘Don’t we know anything for sure?’

  ‘We know . . . what we know,’ Billy said, waving at the whiteboard. ‘Which isn’t much.’

  ‘I’ve had a very preliminary report from the lab in Umeå,’ Ursula said, picking out the document from the pile in front of her. ‘They’ve obtained dental records for the Dutch couple, which seem to confirm what we thought: they are Jan and Framke Bakker.’

  ‘Good.’ Torkel couldn’t hide his disappointment, which Ursula clearly took personally.

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought you wanted us to focus on what we actually know?’

  ‘I know, it’s just that . . .’

  Torkel didn’t finish the sentence. He realised they weren’t going to get any further. Not tonight. After a brief outline of the next day’s tasks, they brought the meeting to a close.

  When he was alone in the room he sat down at the table, placed his palms together and rested his chin on his thumbs. His gaze fastened on the whiteboard, the photographs, the different coloured lines leading to brief key words or phrases, Billy’s timeline. What they actually knew was that they had a woman with two false identities, of which at least one was good enough to enable her to fly to and from the USA after 9/11. Torkel sighed deeply. He had a horrible feeling that the case had just gone from complicated to unbelievably fucking complicated.