The Silent Girl (Sebastian Bergman 4)

by Michael Hjorth

  ‘Thanks,’ Maria called out as he pulled on his shoes. She doesn’t need to thank me, he thought. This definitely wasn’t some kind of sacrifice. On the contrary – he was looking forward to the evening.

  Erik Flodin was in the kitchen frying rösti. The schnitzels had been dipped in egg, flour and breadcrumbs and were drying off on a plate, while the caper and anchovy butter was ready in the fridge. He had plugged his phone into the kitchen stereo and was singing along to Lars Winnerbäck from his Spotify playlist. He enjoyed cooking – he always had. To him it was the perfect form of relaxation. It didn’t matter what his day had been like; an hour’s total focus on his pots and pans was all he needed to make him feel better. It might take a bit longer tonight; today had been crazy. The craziest ever. The murders of the Carlsten family and Jan Ceder were bad enough, but a killer who dresses up in scrubs to get at a witness in hospital during the night … It was like an American action movie. From the moment he had been woken at three o’clock this morning he had thanked his lucky stars that he was no longer in charge of the case.

  ‘Dad.’

  He turned around and reached out to turn down the stereo at the same time. Winnerbäck faded away, and Erik could see from the look on his daughter’s face that it wasn’t a second too soon. Alma had turned twelve just a few weeks ago, and at the moment almost everything Erik and Pia did was either sooo embarrassing or totally, like, hopeless. Erik guessed that his duet with Lars Winnerbäck ticked both boxes.

  ‘Didn’t you hear the doorbell?’ Alma said, making it perfectly clear that she held Erik responsible for the fact that she had had to leave her room and answer the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ Erik wondered, turning down the heat under the rösti. Alma merely shrugged and headed back to her room. Erik wiped his hands and went into the hallway; Frank was standing just inside the door looking apologetic.

  ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you – are you in the middle of dinner?’

  ‘No, it’s fine, come on in,’ Erik said, shaking Frank’s hand. ‘I’ll give Pia a shout.’

  ‘It’s actually you I want to see,’ Frank said, kicking off his boots and following Erik into the kitchen.

  ‘OK – would you like to stay for dinner? It’ll be ready in ten minutes.’

  ‘No, thanks, I have to get back to the boy.’

  Frank sat down at the kitchen table while Erik went back to his cooking. ‘So how can I help you?’ he asked, flipping over the rösti. Perfect.

  ‘I heard you were looking for a car parked near the Bear’s Cave yesterday.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I saw one.’

  Erik turned around as Frank leaned forward and clasped his hands on the table.

  ‘Someone called the council in the morning and said they’d hit a deer, so I drove up there and parked … have you got a map?’

  Erik nodded and left the room. A minute later he was back, spreading a map on the table in front of his guest.

  ‘I parked here.’ Frank pointed to a spot about a kilometre from the Bear’s Cave. ‘There was another car down this little track.’ Frank took out his handkerchief and wiped his nose, which was running slightly from being out in the chilly April evening. ‘At first I thought it was the car that had hit the deer, but there was no one in it, or anywhere nearby.’

  ‘Do you remember what kind of car it was?’ Erik asked as he busied himself with dinner once more.

  ‘It was a Mercedes, I noticed the logo, but I’ve no idea what model it was.’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘Dark blue, almost black.’

  ‘Would you recognise it if you saw a picture?’

  ‘Maybe – I’m not sure.’

  ‘And you don’t remember the registration number?’

  ‘Sorry, no.’

  Erik quickly considered what to do with this information. Get in touch with Torkel, of course. Riksmord had to be told. They would probably want to speak to Frank, see if they could work out what model the Mercedes was, then run a check against the database hoping to find one or more possible vehicles registered to someone living in the area.

  ‘How long can you be away from Hampus?’ Erik asked, trying to come up with a timescale in his head. Frank glanced at his watch.

  ‘His carer leaves in half an hour. Why?’

  ‘You need to speak to Riksmord. They’ll want to try and identify the car.’

  ‘They’re welcome to come and see me at home,’ Frank said as he got to his feet. ‘You can tell them where I live.’

  Erik showed him out, then turned his attention to the schnitzel.

  Sebastian was sitting on the worn grey-green sofa with Nicole by his side, reading aloud from one of the books she had brought with her.

  Gregor the Overlander.

  Something about two siblings who had apparently fallen into the underworld, where one of them was worshipped as a princess by the cockroaches and had to save the subterranean kingdom from war, while both of them searched for their missing father and tried to find their way back to the real world. Maria had said it was a fantasy story.

  Sebastian thought it was utter crap.

  But he had to admit they’d had a very pleasant evening.

  He had cooked dinner for all three of them, with Maria and Nicole keeping him company and acting as his kitchen assistants. Nicole had diced onions and grated carrots for his spaghetti bolognese, while Maria set the table and lit candles; she had found two spectacularly ugly dark green candlesticks on the window ledge. Nicole seemed to have enjoyed her meal; Sebastian had kept the conversation going, hoping to make everything seem as normal as possible. He had asked Maria about her work and her stay in Mali, but he had focused mainly on Nicole. Wondered if she liked school, what her favourite and least favourite subjects were, who her friends were and so on. Although Nicole hadn’t spoken, of course, Sebastian had directed all his questions to her. Maria had given her daughter the opportunity to respond, then answered herself, always concluding with ‘Isn’t that right, sweetheart?’ or something along those lines so that Nicole would feel involved.

  After dinner Sebastian and Maria had cleared away and washed up, while Nicole sat at the table with her pad and coloured pens.

  ‘She got very anxious when you were out shopping,’ Maria had said quietly, nodding in the child’s direction. ‘She stuck to me like glue the whole time.’

  Sebastian turned to look at Nicole; once again he was surprised by the tenderness he felt towards her. She put down her pen and sat back.

  ‘Can I have a look?’ Sebastian moved around the table and looked down at the drawing. A house in a forest. A broken window in a door on a veranda. Even though he hadn’t seen the place, Sebastian assumed this was the house she had broken into on her way to the Bear’s Cave and what she believed would be a safe haven. Only half the house had outside walls, the rest was a kind of cross section. A living room, a kitchen and a bedroom, with a dark-haired girl lying underneath a bed.

  ‘Is it OK if I keep this one too?’ Nicole met Sebastian’s gaze; there were no words, of course, not even a nod to indicate that she had heard what he said. On the other hand, there were no protests either when he picked up the drawing and rolled it up.

  ‘Could you possibly stay while I have a shower?’ Maria had asked, and Sebastian had admitted that he had all the time in the world. No one was waiting for him.

  ★ ★ ★

  Maria stood there for a long time, letting the hot water flow over her body in the hope that it might miraculously wash away some of her grief and despair.

  It didn’t.

  She had witnessed suffering at close quarters through her work. She had got involved, empathised with victims and their families, but she had always managed to maintain the professional distance necessary to avoid being swallowed up, going under.

  But right now she was definitely going under.

  She rested her forehead against the tiles, her body shaking with silent sobs; for the first time since sh
e got home she realised how tired and empty she felt when she didn’t have to be strong for Nicole. Her legs refused to hold her up. She sank down on the floor and sat there with the water pouring down on her.

  She wasn’t sure if she would ever be able to get up again.

  ★ ★ ★

  When she emerged from the bathroom after a good half-hour, Sebastian was sitting on the sofa with Nicole, reading aloud from one of the books she had brought with her. Maria stopped in the doorway, watching them.

  Sebastian Bergman really did have endless patience with the child. In the midst of all the darkness, all the uncertainty and turbulence, he was the fixed point that Nicole needed. And not only Nicole, she realised. She would never have got through the last couple of days without him. She leaned against the door frame listening as his voice altered in both tone and accent for the different characters in the story. She was drawn in just like Nicole, who was utterly absorbed. Maria was even a little disappointed when the chapter came to an end, and Sebastian closed the book and put it down on the coffee table.

  ‘Time I made a move,’ he said, getting to his feet. Nicole immediately looked anxious. She jumped up, hurried over to Maria and clung to her. ‘Will you be OK?’ Sebastian said as he retrieved his coat from the hallway.

  Maria nodded, but heard herself say: ‘Can you stay?’

  Sebastian stopped and looked enquiringly at her.

  ‘Nicole will be sharing with me anyway, so you could have the other room,’ Maria went on. ‘If you want to, that is.’

  He barely had time to formulate the answer in his head before he spoke.

  ‘No problem – of course I can stay,’ Sebastian said, hanging up his coat once more.

  Torkel opened his laptop and was about to write a brief report on his conversation with Gunilla and Kent Bengtsson when there was a knock on the door.

  It had been an eventful evening.

  Erik Flodin had called at about eight o’clock to tell him that a witness had seen a parked car in the right area at the relevant time, but just as Torkel was about to ask Billy to go with him to meet Erik and speak to the witness, he got another call from a man called Kent Bengtsson, the Carlstens’ neighbour, who had found Torkel’s card in his mailbox when he got home. Torkel had quickly changed his plans: Vanja and Billy could go with Erik, while he went over to see the Bengtssons, who welcomed him warmly in spite of the late hour.

  He had got back to the hotel about half an hour ago. When he answered the door, he found Vanja standing there with a white box; the contents immediately filled Torkel’s room with the smell of fast food.

  ‘Want some?’ Vanja asked as she opened the box to reveal a cheeseburger and chips.

  ‘No, thanks – I managed to get the kitchen to make me a sandwich when I got back.’ Torkel opened the window, although Vanja didn’t seem to see the connection with her not-so-fragrant meal.

  ‘How did it go? What did the Bengtssons have to say?’ she asked as she took a big bite of her burger.

  Yes, what did they have to say? Torkel thought. Neither Gunilla nor Kent had been particularly talkative; their answers had been brief, and they hadn’t really said anything that changed the picture the police already had of the Carlsten family. Pleasant, popular, with a burning commitment to environmental issues; Gunilla and Kent didn’t really have a view on such things, although they knew that others had found it irritating.

  ‘What others?’ Torkel had asked, and had received the same answer as before. Jan Ceder and Ove Hanson were the individuals who had been most vociferously opposed to the family, but then they were also the two who had been reported to the police. Otherwise it was just a matter of odd comments and gossip. Nothing serious. And the Bengtssons certainly couldn’t imagine who would want to kill their neighbours. It was just dreadful, particularly the murders of the two little boys. The two of them had often come over to say hello to the horses.

  ‘Nothing we didn’t already know, to be honest,’ Torkel concluded. Vanja nodded. ‘So where had they been since Thursday?’ she asked, dipping a chip in a pool of tomato ketchup.

  ‘They went to a sixtieth birthday party in Karlstad on Friday, and stayed the weekend.’

  ‘So they weren’t too upset to go to a party.’

  ‘I got the feeling they didn’t know the Carlstens all that well. They hadn’t fallen out or anything, they just weren’t very interested.’ Torkel shrugged. ‘How did you get on?’

  ‘OK. Billy showed Frank Hedén pictures of just about every Mercedes that’s been produced since 1970 – that’s what it felt like, anyway.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He wasn’t sure of anything apart from the fact that it was a Merc. Billy’s writing up a report. Are you sure you don’t want some?’ She pushed the white box towards Torkel, who held up a defensive hand. There was another knock on the door, and Billy walked in with his laptop.

  ‘Hi. Vanja’s just been telling me that your little outing wasn’t much use,’ Torkel said by way of a greeting.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Billy replied, looking unusually pleased with himself for someone who had got nowhere. He sat down on Torkel’s bed and turned the laptop so that his colleagues could see the screen.

  ‘Frank wasn’t sure, but the indications were that it was a later model.’ Billy brought up a homepage with a slide show, and a series of Mercedes passed across the screen. ‘It could be an A-class sedan, a C-class sedan, a coupé or an estate car, a CL, a CLA, a CLS—’

  ‘OK, I get it,’ Torkel interrupted him. ‘It could be any one of a long list of cars. Move on.’

  Billy looked a little disappointed that he wasn’t allowed to carry on with his parade of possible cars, but he closed down the slide show and opened a new page.

  ‘There were too many options to be of much help, but then I ran all the relevant models against the database anyway to see if any are registered to owners in this area, and if so, how many.’

  Billy pushed back his shoulders; he couldn’t suppress a smile, which told Torkel that he’d found something. The evening hadn’t been wasted after all.

  ‘Guess who owns a 2011 CLS 350?’

  ‘Who?’ Torkel asked, making it perfectly clear that he wasn’t interested in guessing games right now.

  ‘Ove Hanson.’ Billy brought up the information on his computer.

  ‘Why does that name seem familiar?’ Vanja mumbled with her mouth full of the last chunk of her burger.

  ‘He owns the boatyard down by the lake. Emil Carlsten made a formal complaint to the police because Hanson was using illegal anti-fouling paint on the hulls of his boats,’ Torkel said, leaning forward to take a closer look.

  ‘The local police spoke to him briefly on Friday – there’s a summary in the shared folder, along with Carlsten’s complaint,’ Billy concluded. ‘What do you want us to do?’

  Torkel straightened up and moved away.

  ‘Does he hunt?’

  ‘He has a licence for two shotguns, so I assume he does.’

  Torkel paced around the room for a moment. This was good. It could be the breakthrough they needed. He glanced at his watch: just after eleven. It was unlikely that anything would change if they had a few hours’ well-earned rest.

  ‘We’ll read through what we’ve got and bring him in first thing in the morning,’ he decided.

  Billy and Vanja nodded, and after a brief chat about the plan for the following day, they went off to their respective rooms.

  When he was alone Torkel closed the window and wondered whether to call Ursula. He wanted to, he longed to hear her voice, but it was too late. It would have to wait until tomorrow, and with a bit of luck he might be able to tell her that they were a little closer to solving the case.

  He was on his way to the bathroom when his phone rang. Ursula, he thought optimistically, but it was a different number, a different name.

  ‘It’s late,’ he said.

  ‘I know, sorry about that,’ Axel Weber said, sounding as if he actu
ally meant it. ‘I just wanted to tell you something.’

  ‘What?’ Torkel’s tone was anything but friendly.

  ‘I have some younger colleagues up in Stockholm …’ Weber paused as if he wasn’t quite sure how to continue. ‘You’ve moved the girl, haven’t you?’

  ‘No comment. Goodnight,’ Torkel said, determined to end the call.

  ‘Wait, wait, that’s not why I called.’ Weber took a deep breath, as if he wanted to make absolutely sure he was doing the right thing. ‘They know where she is. We’re publishing the details tomorrow.’

  THIS IS WHERE SHE’S HIDING

  Capital letters.

  Followed by a smaller but equally eye-catching subheading:

  SHE SURVIVED THE HOUSE OF HORROR

  The rest of the page was taken up by a grainy image that appeared to have been taken with a telephoto lens from a considerable distance away; this was probably a deliberate choice aimed at increasing the sensationalism and the air of a major revelation, Torkel assumed. Given the photographic techniques available these days, he could see no reason why the picture wasn’t in sharp focus. It showed a section of the apartment block where Nicole and Maria had arrived less than twenty-four hours ago. Easily identifiable in spite of the poor quality. A pale oval that could well be a child’s face at a window on the third floor. A red ring around the window so that no one could miss it, or doubt the accuracy of the headline.

  ‘It’s already out,’ Torkel said after describing the front page to Sebastian over the phone.

  ‘Have they said exactly where we are?’ Sebastian asked, trying to absorb the enormity of what he had just heard. They would have to move. But where would they go? To his surprise the answer came into his mind immediately.

  ‘It says in an anonymous apartment block in Farsta,’ Torkel replied, skimming the article once more. ‘But with the picture it won’t be difficult to find for anyone who’s interested.’