The Disciple

by Michael Hjorth

  Gain his trust.

  He could see the headlines.

  He could already hear the praise.

  It was after lunch by the time they gathered in the Room again. Sebastian had been home for a shower. He still hadn’t got over his failure at Lövhaga. Not only had he not found out anything, but Hinde had won. A straight knockout. Sebastian had gone over the entire meeting in his head as he stood in the shower, and had come to the conclusion that it was actually Vanja’s fault. Not because she had started bargaining with Hinde – they might have been able to turn that around, not to their advantage but at least into a no-score draw. The problem was Vanja herself. Who she was. His daughter. Sebastian had walked into the meeting with secrets. When he had met Hinde in the past, there had been nothing he felt he needed to hide. He could play his hand, react as he wished, make decisions on the spur of the moment without being afraid that the man on the other side of the table would find out more than he ought to know. That was no longer the case. If you were going to keep up with Hinde, then you had to be able to use the whole playing field. If there was a tiny area where you were unwilling to go, then you could count on the fact that Hinde would steer the conversation in that direction. This time not only did he have secrets to keep from Hinde, but from Vanja too. An impossible situation.

  Torkel’s fault.

  Or his.

  He should have said no.

  He shouldn’t have gone to Lövhaga with Vanja, he should have gone with Billy.

  Pity he didn’t think of that until he was in the shower.

  Sebastian sat down next to Ursula. The Room was hot and sticky, with a stuffy smell. Someone had opened the window, but it didn’t help at all. There was no air conditioning in the Room; it was merely connected to the ordinary ventilation system, which struggled to cope with the heat in summer.

  When they were all sitting down Billy started the projector on the ceiling and switched on his laptop.

  ‘I’ve found both men who were released from Lövhaga; it wasn’t difficult, we’ve kept tabs on them pretty well.’

  He pressed a key and the picture of a man aged around fifty appeared on the wall. Ponytail. Broad face, broken nose, and a red scar running over his left eye and down his cheek. The man looked like a caricature of a career criminal.

  ‘Roland Johansson. Born in Gothenburg in 1962. Two attempted murders and aggravated assault. Substance abuse. Held in Lövhaga from 2001 to 2008. Moved back to Gothenburg after serving his sentence. I spoke to his liaison officer. They were away together when the second and third murders were committed. Coach trip to Österlen with Narcotics Anonymous.’

  ‘Is he using again?’ Vanja chipped in.

  ‘Not according to his liaison officer, but he does attend meetings on a regular basis.’ Billy glanced down at his notes. ‘He doesn’t have an alibi for the first murder, but yesterday morning he was definitely in Gothenburg, again according to the liaison officer.’

  Torkel sighed. Johansson definitely sounded like yet another person they could eliminate from the investigation. ‘Who’s his liaison officer?’

  Billy leafed through his papers. ‘Fabian Fridell.’

  ‘What do we know about him?’

  Billy understood why Torkel was asking. All Johansson’s alibis were provided by the same person. It was unlikely that two different people had committed the murders, but Johansson might have some kind of hold over Fridell, forcing him to provide an alibi.

  ‘Not much. Nothing on record as far as I could see, but I’ll check him out.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And I’ll speak to some of the others who were on that coach trip.’

  Torkel nodded. No doubt Roland Johansson had been ambling around Österlen visiting breweries and painting in oils by the sea, or whatever Drug Addicts Anonymous did on their coach trips. But the sooner they knew for certain, the sooner they could eliminate him.

  ‘I’ve requested his fingerprints and those of the other guy from records,’ Ursula stated. ‘So we can compare them with those found at the crime scenes.’

  ‘Good,’ Torkel replied. ‘We’ll run both a forensic check and an activity check on both of them.’

  ‘I can take Fridell,’ Billy said.

  ‘How did Johansson get that scar?’ Sebastian wondered.

  Billy looked through his papers again, quickly and eagerly. He wanted to appear keen. ‘It doesn’t say. Is it important?’

  ‘No. Just curious.’

  Billy brought up the next picture. A younger man, Latin-American appearance. Large gold hoop in each ear.

  ‘José Rodriguez, aged thirty-five. Held in Lövhaga since 2003. Assault and rape. Lives in Södertälje.’

  ‘That’s where the Focus was stolen,’ Vanja said.

  ‘Exactly. When I made that connection I contacted the local force and they went to speak to him.’ Billy was pleased that he was one step ahead. He went on: ‘According to them, Rodriguez can’t remember what he was doing on the dates in question. Evidently he’s a pretty serious alcoholic, at least from time to time.’

  He shut down the laptop, went over to the board and pinned up hard copies of the pictures they had just seen.

  Torkel turned to Sebastian. ‘What did you get out of Hinde?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  Sebastian shrugged his shoulders. ‘He’s lost weight and he wanted to touch Vanja’s tits, but that was about it.’

  ‘But he does know something about the murders,’ said Vanja, choosing to ignore what Sebastian had just said.

  Torkel looked at her enquiringly. ‘And how do you know that?’

  Now it was Vanja’s turn to shrug. ‘A feeling.’

  ‘A feeling?’ Torkel pushed back his chair with some force and stood up. He started pacing up and down the room. ‘So I have a man who claims to be an expert in serial killers in general and Edward Hinde in particular, and he gets fuck-all out of a face-to-face meeting.’ He scowled at Sebastian, who met his gaze with equanimity before reaching for a bottle of mineral water. Purely out of consideration for Torkel’s blood pressure, he chose not to respond. Torkel was usually the epitome of calm, but sometimes he erupted. All you could do was wait for it to pass. Sebastian opened the bottle and took a swig.

  Evidently Torkel had finished with him, because he turned to Vanja. ‘And then I have an investigator who has a feeling that Hinde is involved. A feeling! What shall we do next? Get someone to draw up his fucking horoscope?! Bloody hell!’ Torkel stopped and slammed both hands down on the table. ‘Women are dying!’

  The room fell silent. From outside they could hear the faint sound of traffic, which no one had noticed until now. A wasp buzzed in through the window, but seemed to change its mind; it banged into the glass several times before finding its way out. Nobody moved. Everybody kept their eyes fixed on some neutral area where they could be sure of not meeting anyone else’s eye. Except for Ursula, who looked at each of them in turn, apparently pleased not to have come under fire herself. Sebastian took another swig of mineral water. Billy adjusted a photograph which was already perfectly straight. Vanja started picking at a fingernail. Torkel remained standing by the table for a little while, then he walked very deliberately back to his place, pulled the chair towards him and sat down. If anyone was going to break the oppressive atmosphere that had descended, it would have to be him. He took a deep breath. ‘If I arrange another meeting with Hinde, is there any chance that you might get something this time?’

  ‘Possibly if I go alone,’ Sebastian replied.

  Vanja reacted immediately. ‘Oh right, so it was my fault we didn’t get anywhere?’

  ‘That’s not what I said.’

  ‘You said you’d do better without me. How the hell am I supposed to interpret that?’

  ‘I couldn’t give a toss. Interpret it however you like.’ Sebastian finished off the bottle of mineral water and belched gently due to the carbon dioxide, which made his tone more unpleasant than he had
intended.

  Vanja turned to Torkel. ‘Do you think this is working? Do you?’

  ‘Vanja . . .’

  ‘Do you remember what we said we were going to do if it wasn’t working? We said we were going to kick him out.’

  Torkel sighed. He had lost his temper, and now there was a bad atmosphere within the team. The question was whether it had arisen out of frustration because they still knew nothing about the perpetrator, or whether it was because they had let Sebastian in again. Torkel didn’t know, but he had to bring them back together, if only temporarily.

  He slowly got to his feet. ‘Okay . . . let’s all calm down. It’s hot, we’ve been working hard, it’s been a long day, and it’s not over yet.’

  He went over to the board and gazed at the pictures before turning back to face the others. ‘We need to get close to this man. We need to catch him. Ursula, compare the fingerprints and DNA with our records on Johansson and Rodriguez.’

  Ursula nodded, got up and left the room.

  ‘Vanja, go over to Södertälje and see if you can improve Rodriguez’s memory.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait and see what Ursula comes up with?’

  ‘The car that has presumably been following Sebastian came from the same place. At the moment that’s enough to warrant paying a little more attention to Rodriguez.’

  Vanja nodded. ‘But he’s not coming with me.’ She gestured in Sebastian’s direction without looking at him.

  Torkel sighed. ‘No, he’s not going with you.’

  ‘I just don’t understand you.’

  Torkel and Sebastian walked into Torkel’s office.

  ‘You’re not the only one.’

  Sebastian went and sat down on the sofa, while Torkel perched on the edge of the desk.

  ‘You fight to come back, and once you’re in, you seem to be doing your level best to get kicked out again.’

  ‘Are you really thinking of getting rid of me just because I’ve trodden on a few toes?’

  ‘It’s not about that. Not anymore.’

  ‘I couldn’t have known that Annette Willén was going to be murdered.’

  ‘I’m taking a big risk, keeping you in this investigation. You have links to all four victims. Imagine what that’s going to look like to those upstairs.’

  ‘Since when did you care about that kind of thing?’

  Torkel sighed wearily. ‘I’ve always cared about that kind of thing, because that’s what gives my team the freedom to act on their own initiative. I know it doesn’t matter to you, because you always do exactly as you please. But I’m telling you for the last time: sort yourself out.’

  Sebastian thought over what he had done, what he had said, how he had acted since he joined the investigation. He quickly reached the conclusion that he had behaved exactly as he always did. He said what he thought, and didn’t tiptoe around pretending to be eternally grateful. But he really didn’t want to be kicked out. He could be close to Vanja if he stayed, but that wasn’t the only reason. It wasn’t even the most important thing anymore. If someone had asked him a couple of days ago what would diminish his interest in Vanja, his obsession with her, he would have said ‘Nothing’. But he would have been wrong. Now something else was at the forefront of his mind, overshadowing everything else – even Vanja. Four women had died because of him.

  ‘I really will try,’ said Sebastian sincerely. ‘I don’t want to leave.’

  Torkel got up and closed the door. Sebastian looked at his colleague with a certain degree of scepticism as he sat down in the armchair opposite. Now what?

  ‘What’s going on with Billy? He seems to be trying to move up a step or two,’ said Sebastian, hoping the therapy session would be forgotten if he shifted the focus to someone else.

  ‘You’re changing the subject.’

  ‘You noticed.’

  ‘I’m happy to talk about Billy. Some other time.’ Torkel leaned forward and put his hands together as if he were about to start praying. A bad sign, Sebastian thought. A listening stance.

  ‘What’s happened, Sebastian? You always used to be selfish and unpleasant and self-important, but since you came back . . . It’s as if you’re at war with everything and everybody.’

  Torkel fell silent. The question hung in the air. What’s happened? For a second Sebastian wondered what it would be like if he actually told Torkel. About Lily. About Sabine. About a happiness he had never known before or since. About the wave that had taken everything away from him. What harm would it do? It might even give him a bit more room for manoeuvre within the team. Torkel would feel sorry for him, he was sure of it. Genuinely sorry. He would care in a way that nobody else had cared since it happened. Not that Sebastian had given anyone the chance to show they cared, but still.

  A Torkel who interpreted everything Sebastian did as a reaction to grief could be very useful.

  It was his joker.

  His get-out-of-jail-free card.

  He had no intention of playing it until it became absolutely necessary, but he knew he had to come up with some kind of answer for Torkel. He knew exactly what to say. He would tell the truth.

  ‘I feel responsible.’

  ‘For the murders.’ A statement, not a question.

  Sebastian nodded.

  ‘I can understand that in a way,’ Torkel said. ‘But you’re not to blame for their deaths.’

  Sebastian knew that. Logically, he knew that. Emotionally it was a completely different matter. It still felt surprisingly good to talk about it. Perhaps he could have discussed it with Stefan instead, but he wasn’t sure if Stefan was still his therapist after what had happened. Sebastian had called him and actually left an apology on his answering machine, but Stefan hadn’t called back. And that was before Stefan even knew that Annette had been murdered. If Stefan found out that she had been killed because she had spent the night with Sebastian, their relationship would almost certainly be beyond repair. It was probably time to look for someone new to talk to, but until then, Torkel would have to do.

  ‘The latest one, Annette. I slept with her just to annoy my therapist.’

  ‘And what were your motives for sleeping with all the rest?’

  Sebastian was surprised by the question, and by Torkel’s relaxed attitude. He had been expecting a condemnation. Perhaps more of a gentle rebuke, given the fact that Sebastian was clearly affected by what had happened, but still a condemnation of sorts. Torkel’s moral compass was extremely well calibrated.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re not out there looking for Miss Right, are you? All these women have just been some kind of . . . distraction.’ Torkel leaned back in his armchair. ‘You’re a user. You don’t care about the women. Not before, not afterwards.’

  Sebastian didn’t even try to deny it. It wasn’t exactly breaking news.

  The first three victims, the women from his past, gnawed away at him, but there was a limit to how far you could rewind the tape, how far back in time you could regret your actions. But Annette . . . that was different. She had got under his skin.

  ‘She had such low self-esteem, Annette. She was desperate for someone to make her feel good about herself. It was so easy . . .’

  ‘You’ve got a guilty conscience.’ Once again a statement, not a question.

  Sebastian had to think about that. It was so long since he’d had a guilty conscience he wasn’t sure what it felt like. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Would you have felt like that if she hadn’t been murdered?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In that case, it doesn’t count.’

  Harsh, but true. The exploitation, the conquest didn’t bother him at all. But she had died because he had had a bad day. That was difficult to ignore.

  ‘Are you in touch with any of the women you’ve been with?’ Torkel took the conversation in a new direction. Moving forward.

  ‘There are almost forty years between the first and the last. I can’t reme
mber even a fraction of them.’

  Torkel caught himself wondering how many partners he had had. Two wives, four or five girlfriends before the first wife. Four, really. A few between his marriages. And then Ursula. Maybe double figures. He didn’t need to make much of an effort to remember all their names. But of course in Sebastian’s case he would have to multiply that by twenty, perhaps thirty. Perhaps even more. Memory lets us down.

  ‘What I’m trying to say,’ Torkel went on, ‘is that if you do what you can to prevent a repetition, that might help. Both you and us.’ He got up, signalling that the conversation was over. ‘But if you don’t remember them, it can’t be helped.’

  Sebastian stayed where he was, gazing into space.

  Thinking.

  He did remember some of them . . .

  Vanja was gazing out over the centre. It could have been anywhere. But it was Hovsjö. One of the thirty-eight regions earmarked by the government in 2009 for ‘additional attention’ in order to ‘combat a sense of exclusion’, Vanja recalled. ‘An investment’ in ‘vulnerable areas’. Which was all a more elegant way of describing a suburb where there were more problems than solutions. Vanja had no idea whether this additional attention had achieved anything, but it certainly didn’t look that way.

  Her GPS had guided her to Granövägen. A few metres up ahead it was possible to turn left into Kvarstavägen, which was where the pale blue Ford Focus had been stolen from six months earlier. José Rodriguez was suddenly a lot more interesting.

  Vanja had parked, got out of the car and looked up at the brown eight-storey building. Found the right entrance and the right apartment. Rung the bell. No one answered, so she had tried the neighbour opposite on the same floor; Haddad was the name on the letterbox. A woman of about forty-five had opened the door. Vanja showed her ID and asked if the woman had seen José Rodriguez, or knew where Vanja might find him.

  ‘I should think he’s probably in the square,’ the woman said with hardly any trace of an accent.

  ‘Does he work there?’ Vanja asked, picturing a lively market like the one in Hötorget in the middle of Stockholm.