The Silent Girl (Sebastian Bergman 4)

by Michael Hjorth

  ‘Whenever we see something like this it’s usually to do with family conflict and custody issues,’ he said.

  ‘We haven’t found anything like that,’ Fabian said. ‘They’d been married for twelve years. No contact with social services. Karin has a sister in Stockholm – we haven’t managed to get hold of her yet. Emil was an only child, and his parents are dead.’

  He pointed to a dirty mark on the floor next to the rug.

  ‘That’s the first clear print we found. There are a couple upstairs that show the whole pattern on the sole.’

  Billy took a closer look.

  ‘What size shoes does Jan Ceder wear?’

  ‘We’re in the process of finding out. The search team are at his house right now, and I’ve sent them a picture of the prints.’

  Torkel made up his mind; he didn’t need to see any more.

  ‘OK. I’d like you two to concentrate on this place, both inside and out. Widen the search area – the perpetrator got here somehow, and I want to know how.’

  Fabian tried to protest.

  ‘I promised Erik I’d try and take a look at Ceder’s house too.’

  ‘You won’t have time. Ceder’s not going anywhere. This is the most important place. Update Billy on everything you’ve found so far, and keep everyone else out. I don’t want a whole lot of people trampling around in here.’

  Fabian didn’t look happy, but he nodded. Torkel attempted a friendly smile as he walked towards the front door.

  ‘Don’t you want to see upstairs?’ Fabian couldn’t hide his surprise. ‘Emil and the other boy are up there.’

  Torkel shook his head.

  ‘Show Billy. I want to find out a bit more about the family.’ He turned to his colleague. ‘Billy, could I have a word, please?’

  ‘Of course.’

  They stepped outside. Torkel lowered his voice and leaned closer.

  ‘He seems OK, but double-check his findings. I’m a bit worried that they homed in on Ceder right away. They might have missed something that would lead us in a different direction.’

  Billy nodded. ‘No problem.’

  Torkel placed a hand on Billy’s shoulder to show his appreciation. Vanja had always been the unspoken favourite of the two of them, but Billy had grown a lot over the past year. He was fairly quiet and definitely wasn’t as intuitive as Vanja, but he was always there when Torkel needed him.

  ‘I know you’re carrying a lot of responsibility this time, but I’m going to call Ursula and ask if she can give us some support,’ Torkel said.

  ‘But surely she’s signed off sick?’

  ‘Yes, but I think it would do her good to get back in the swing of things – just a little bit.’

  ‘I can set up a link so she has access to all the material.’

  Torkel smiled at him. As always, Billy was there when you needed him.

  ★ ★ ★

  Torkel asked Fabian for directions to the Torsson family house, and decided to walk. On the way he called Ursula, who sounded surprisingly pleased when he asked her if she could help them out with the investigation. She made him promise to make sure Billy set up a link as soon as possible.

  It was liberating to hear Ursula’s voice as they discussed the case. She came to life, as if all that pent-up energy had somewhere to go. However brutal the details might be, she was more comfortable talking about concrete matters than about her feelings.

  That was just the way she was.

  Better with the dead than the living.

  Torkel said he would call her in the evening so that they could exchange their impressions of the first day. That was how they usually worked, and he was pleased that Ursula liked the idea. He stopped. Was this the way back? Returning to what was familiar, what they had once had together? Perhaps that was where he’d gone wrong; he’d tried to change their relationship into a normal man–woman liaison. Their intimacy was built on solving cases together, not on cohabiting and being a couple like everyone else.

  That was what he wanted, but she most definitely didn’t.

  He had to accept the truth.

  The Torssons’ place lay to the north behind the grove of trees at the back of the Carlsten property, and according to Fabian there was a narrow path between the two houses. That was the route Cornelia Torsson had taken when she discovered the bodies.

  He found it quickly, next to the abandoned drying rack, a well-used track disappearing among the dark trees. Torkel increased his speed. It was good to be in the fresh air, inhaling the scents of the forest and clearing his head of the stench of death. In here, only a few metres from the burgeoning greenery in the Carlstens’ garden, spring was nowhere near as advanced. The ground was still damp from the winter, and here and there little piles of snow remained, particularly on the shaded side of the bigger trees. He went up a slope and stopped again. About thirty metres away he could just see a yellow house. The material he had been given hadn’t included much information about the Torsson family; he knew they were a couple in their forties with one daughter. The father worked in the finance department at the local council, and the mother in the health service. Their daughter often played with the Carlsten boys. They had been away visiting relatives over Easter, and had come home on Wednesday evening. The following morning Cornelia had gone over to see her friends, and found the bodies. It was a pity they hadn’t been home; it wasn’t very far between the houses, and they would probably have heard the shots and been able to provide an exact time for the murders. Plus their daughter would have been spared the traumatic experience of finding Karin dead in the hallway. Then again, things could have been even worse if they’d gone running over to see what was going on, or if Cornelia had already been there with the boys.

  Torkel concluded that on the whole it was fortunate that the Torssons had decided to celebrate Easter elsewhere. The killer had acted with such coldness that he would have had no problem in killing more people. A lot more.

  ★ ★ ★

  Felix Torsson opened the door; Torkel proffered his ID and was shown into the living room where Hannah and her daughter were sitting. Cornelia was clinging to her mother so tightly it looked as if she would never let her go.

  ‘So how old are you?’ Torkel asked in a friendly tone of voice when he had been introduced. ‘You’re nine, aren’t you, sweetheart?’

  Cornelia neither confirmed nor denied her age; she simply buried her head in her mother’s chest.

  Torkel sat down opposite the family and apologised for disturbing them. The parents nodded, looking at Torkel with a level of anticipation that was hard to misinterpret: they wanted him to help them understand. The curtains were closed, and neither the flickering candles on the low black glass coffee table nor the small glowing lamps were able to chase away the darkness and the shadows.

  The silence and the pockets of gloom made Torkel think about some of the paintings he had seen in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam when he was there with his daughters. They had gone there for a short break during the autumn half-term holiday last year, mainly to make up for all the times Torkel hadn’t been able to see them. The museum had just reopened after a lengthy period of renovation, and Vilma had managed to drag along her sceptical older sister and her slightly less sceptical dad. Torkel had been pleasantly surprised by Rembrandt, above all because of his feeling for faces in the darkness: people who were clearly carrying something within themselves, barely visible in the surrounding blackness, yet their humanity shone through. Like the Torssons … Felix broke the silence.

  ‘Is there anything you can tell us?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Do you know who did this?’

  Torkel tried to respond as neutrally as possible; he spoke calmly, sticking to the truth.

  ‘At the moment we’re trying to gain an overall picture. We’re waiting for the forensic examination to be completed, but we have secured a certain amount of evidence.’

  ‘Against Jan Ceder?’ Felix said immediately. Torkel knew that rumours spread more quickly in
small towns than in cities, but it was important for him to kill off any speculation as quickly as possible, and to say nothing that could add fuel to the fire.

  ‘I can’t comment on any names. We’re working on a number of leads.’

  ‘We don’t know him,’ Felix went on; he obviously wasn’t prepared to give up that easily. ‘But he’s not the kind of person you’d want to hang out with, if I can put it that way. We heard he’d been arrested.’

  Torkel decided to change the subject, and turned to Hannah.

  ‘How’s Cornelia?’

  When she heard her name, the child burrowed into her mother’s body once again. Hannah gently stroked her long blonde hair.

  ‘Not too bad. We’ve been given the name of a contact in the Children’s Psychiatric Support Service in Karlstad, but for the moment we’re just trying to take it step by step.’

  Torkel gave Hannah an encouraging smile.

  ‘That’s good. You have to let these things take their time.’ He turned his attention to Cornelia, even though she still refused to look at him.

  ‘Cornelia, I’d like to speak to your mum or dad on their own for a little while – is that OK with you?’

  The girl didn’t move, but Felix got to his feet.

  ‘Come on, Cornelia, let’s go up to your room.’

  He picked her up gently, and she immediately wrapped her arms tightly around his neck.

  ‘Hannah was at home when it happened, and she knew the family better than I did,’ he said over his daughter’s shoulder. ‘I can come back down if you need me.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Torkel said. He waited until Felix and Cornelia had reached the top of the stairs before he spoke to Hannah.

  ‘I realise all these questions are difficult, but I need more information,’ he began. ‘For example, has Cornelia said anything since she spoke to the police?’

  Hannah shook her head firmly. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Anything at all. Has she been wondering about something, had she seen anyone at the Carlstens’, had the boys mentioned anything that had come back to her?’

  ‘No, she’s been very quiet.’ Hannah’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I hate myself for not going with her. I used to, but since last summer we’ve let her go on her own. She wanted to feel grown up.’

  Torkel remained silent; there wasn’t much else he could do. Hannah had to work through this on her own. He was about to bring the conversation back to the Carlstens when Hannah went on:

  ‘Do you think it’s safe for us to stay here?’ she said, anxiety etched on her face. She had managed to suppress her fear when her daughter was in her arms, but now she didn’t need to be brave.

  It was a difficult question to answer. Torkel’s experience told him that the murders next door were specifically targeted at the Carlsten family; it was unlikely that the killer would return and attack the neighbours. But of course he couldn’t give any guarantees.

  ‘I really don’t think you’re in any danger, but I can’t be sure. If it will make you feel better, you can go away for a few days – just let me know where I can reach you.’

  He took out his card and passed it to Hannah. She looked relieved, and he knew that she would follow his advice. However, he couldn’t let the family go just yet.

  ‘Did you know the Carlstens well?’

  ‘I was probably the neighbour who knew them best, mainly because Cornelia loved the boys. They were good people, but a little bit different.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘They were really nice, honestly they were, but they did rub some people up the wrong way. They stuck out, if you know what I mean. They were from Stockholm, and there was a feeling that they were too fond of sounding off about the environment and so on.’ Hannah seemed to appreciate the opportunity to talk about something else; some of the colour had returned to her face. ‘That business of filming Jan Ceder and the wolf, for example. You don’t do that kind of thing if you live here. Even if you don’t like the person. That put people’s backs up.’

  ‘Are you thinking of anyone other than Ceder?’

  Hannah thought for a moment.

  ‘I mean, I’m not suggesting he … murdered them, but Emil made a complaint to the police about the boatyard down by the lake. Ove Hanson’s place. They could be a bit argumentative, particularly Emil, but we never had any problem with them. Never.’

  Torkel took out his notebook and wrote down:

  HANSON / BOATYARD / EMIL?

  ‘OK, good. Anything else?’

  ‘Not that I can remember, and now I’ve made it sound as if there was something wrong with them.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. You just told me what you know, and that’s what I need.’

  Hannah suddenly looked sad again.

  ‘It’s so difficult. I mean, when it comes down to it, we agreed with them. I love nature too, it’s just that sometimes they were a bit naïve … You have to fit in, don’t you?’

  Torkel nodded. Hannah gazed into space for a moment before she went on. It was clear that she felt guilty for even thinking anything bad about the family that had been murdered.

  ‘They were such good people. They worked so hard. Their place was really run down when they took it on – they renovated the house, improved the garden and so on. And now … now they’re gone …’

  Torkel didn’t know what to say, but one thing he was sure of. He needed to find out more about the Carlstens.

  ★ ★ ★

  Torkel took the long way back to the scene of the crime.

  The gravel track between the houses had been laid quite recently, and the pale grey stones crunched beneath his feet. He called Eva Blomstedt in the records office and asked her to do a search on Emil and Karin Carlsten. She quickly found two convictions from 1994 and 1995; both involved trespass and criminal damage, and had resulted in fines and an order to pay compensation. Evidently Emil was – or had been – a member of the Animal Liberation Front, a fairly militant animal-rights organisation, and had taken part in two attacks on mink farms in Östergötland. On both occasions they had managed to release hundreds of mink from their cages. Emil was only twenty-one in 1995, and there was no record of any criminal activity since then. The sins of youth. Torkel thanked Eva for her help and decided to call Björn Nordström in Säpo, the national security police. They had met at a Christmas party a few years earlier, and Björn had told Torkel that he’d just been asked to monitor the activities of militant animal-rights groups in Sweden. Hopefully he would be able to provide information on Emil off the record, preferably some indication as to whether Torkel ought to request more details through the formal and much slower route.

  Björn didn’t pick up, so Torkel left him a brief message.

  He had reached the crossroads where the main road to Torsby met the smaller dirt tracks that snaked around the area. Torsby was to the right, the Carlsten house to the left. He could see Billy and Fabian crouching at the bottom of the steps, and decided not to disturb them. With Billy on site he could be sure of getting a full report on anything they might find. Instead he headed over to another neighbour. The Bengtssons lived further along the road leading straight ahead. According to the report they had been at home, but had heard and seen nothing. However, the interview had been extremely brief, and there was no information about their relationship with the Carlstens.

  The route led across several extensive fields surrounded by last year’s long yellow grass; some had already been ploughed, and in an enclosed pasture a group of horses were kicking up their heels, throwing off the confines of winter. There was no sign of a house, but he assumed the horses belonged to the Bengtssons, so it couldn’t be too far away.

  Björn Nordström called him back just as Torkel spotted a group of buildings: a red house and two barns. The place looked a lot more run down than either the Torsson or Carlsten properties. Björn apologised; he was up in Härjedalen with his family, and didn’t have access to his computer. However, he had never heard of Emil Carlsten, s
o it was unlikely that he was particularly active, or played a central role in any of the militant animal-rights movements. Björn promised to check once he was back – or was it urgent? Torkel thought for a moment. Carlsten’s last conviction was in 1995, there was nothing in Erik Flodin’s notes about animal rights … no, it probably wasn’t urgent. They chatted for a little longer; Björn had heard about the brutal murders, and wished Torkel well with the investigation.

  By the time they ended the call, Torkel had reached the yard. The house itself looked empty and in darkness, and there was no car outside. Well, not one that was fit to drive. There were a couple of wrecks next to the largest barn, with doors missing and windscreens shattered. The whole place was overgrown with nettles, and the closer he got to the house, the more evidence he saw of a total lack of maintenance. The white paint on the window frames was flaking off, and in several places there were clear signs of damp on the wooden facade.

  He tried the bell, but it didn’t seem to work; at any rate he couldn’t hear anything when he pressed his ear to the door. He knocked, but to no avail. They weren’t home. He jotted down a message on the back of his card and dropped it in the mailbox on passing.

  It was dark now, and chilly. He should have brought the car, he thought. It was easy to make a mistake in the early spring; everyone forgot how cold it got as soon as the sun went down. He zipped up his jacket and set off for the Carlstens’ house. With a bit of luck Billy would have finished and they could head back.

  Sebastian opened the window and looked out into the garden. Riksmord had taken four of the seven rooms in the yellow fin-de-siècle hotel which, according to the talkative lady on reception, was originally built as an extensive private residence known locally as the Palm House, because there was a palm tree two storeys high in the foyer. It had then been divided between several families before becoming an officers’ camp for a while; it was finally converted into a hotel at the end of the 1940s, blah blah blah. Sebastian couldn’t even bring himself to feign interest.

  With the clear night air pouring in, he sat down on the bed, picked up the remote and switched on the TV.