by Peter Mohlin
John took a deep breath and had to make an effort to gather his thoughts. The situation wasn’t good, but it was also considerably better than it had been a moment earlier, when he had been convinced that Ganiru’s henchmen had caught up with him. Ruben Jonsson was a threat he ought to be able to deal with.
He opened the door, crossed the street, and approached the Volvo diagonally from behind. When he reached it, he wrenched open the passenger door and got in.
“Why are you following me?” he said, looking at his colleague, who was so taken aback that he dropped his paper plate of mashed potatoes and hot dog into his lap.
“Hell! You startled me.”
“You’ve been stuck to me like a stamp for the last twenty-four hours. Why?”
The question lingered in the air while Ruben put the plate on the dashboard.
“I know who you are, John,” he said, smacking his lips.
The instinctive reaction was to protest, but John realized the battle was already lost. Ruben knew his name. That meant he must have made the connection to Billy and his mother.
“When did you realize?” he said.
Ruben turned to him.
“You were unlucky with the nurse at Gunnarskärsgården. She’s my wife.”
“I know, I saw her getting into your car—the white Toyota.”
“Crap—I didn’t know that,” said Ruben. “She told me a policeman had come to visit Billy Nerman’s mother. I asked her to describe you. You’re not exactly hard to spot. We don’t have many people of color in the force here in Karlstad.”
He rescued his plate from sliding into his lap again before going on.
“Granted, it wasn’t that odd that you wanted to talk to the prime suspect’s mother for some background information. But you didn’t tell any of the rest of us about the visit, which I thought was odd. It didn’t take a big leap to consider that there might be a connection between you—perhaps even that you were mother and son.”
“When were you sure?”
“Yesterday afternoon. I got stuck when I checked the population register. According to that, your mother only had one kid. But I checked which school Billy went to and called the old principal. He told me there was a big brother.”
John noted that his suspicions had been confirmed. Ruben Jonsson was a good detective who was never satisfied until he got the answer he was after. He cursed his doubly bad luck. Not only had the wife of a coworker seen him at Gunnarskärsgården—it had been the wrong colleague. If Ulf Törner had been married to the nurse, he would have grabbed another doughnut and ignored the whole thing.
“Okay, so what happens now?” John said.
Ruben looked at him stone-faced.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On how you answer my questions.”
John held out his hands in a gesture that indicated he was going to cooperate.
“Why are you lying about who you are?”
John realized there was no point in trying to fabricate something. Better to be straight with Ruben and hope to win his trust.
“What I’m going to tell you is strictly confidential,” he said. “I’m part of the FBI’s witness protection program. There’s a threat against me which means I have to live under a false identity.”
His colleague didn’t look as surprised as he had expected.
“If it hadn’t been for the issue with the population register, I would have said you were full of shit. But it’s not easy to scrub data out of public records. You need someone big and powerful to make that kind of thing happen.”
“Like the FBI,” John said.
“Like the FBI,” his colleague repeated. “It wouldn’t be the first time the Swedish authorities had had their strings pulled by the Yanks.”
John thought he discerned a slight crack in the stony mask, in the form of a bitter smile.
“Why are you involved in the investigation into your own brother?” Ruben asked. “You must realize how inappropriate that is?”
John did. The question was whether he should explain the maelstrom of contradictory emotions within him that had made him come back to Sweden.
“I want to know what happened,” he said. “I deserve to know whether my brother is a murderer or not—and our mother does too.”
“And you don’t trust us to find that out for ourselves?”
“No, I don’t,” said John, surprised by the harshness in his own voice. “You didn’t manage it last time, so why would you succeed now? It’s very possible or even likely that my brother is the perpetrator. If he is, he should take his punishment. But you’re not looking at the case in an open way. This is about sending Billy down as quickly as possible. Alternative avenues of investigation and new evidence aren’t of any interest if they won’t help the prosecutor build a case against him.”
John had expected defensiveness, but Ruben seemed to take his criticism of the investigation very calmly.
“Let’s say for the sake of argument that you have a point,” he said. “We’ve gotten fixated on Billy Nerman and we’re blind to other perspectives. What is there to suggest there’s an alternative suspect?”
“Not much,” John acknowledged. “But there are a few things worth considering.”
He told him about the visit to Björkbacken. He described how the three girls had gotten the same tattoos after being discharged and explained that Maja was actually Matilda Jacoby and registered as a resident of Charlottenberg. He also showed Ruben the Polaroids he had managed to obtain at the tattoo parlor.
“So that means we know who the mysterious friend is?” said Ruben.
John nodded. “Yes, and if we can get hold of her she might very well be able to tell us who Emelie left the party to meet.”
His colleague sat in silence for a moment.
“And if she says it was Billy?”
“Then we’ve got the forensic evidence to go with fresh witness statements. The charges will be much stronger,” said John, aware that his loyalty was being tested.
Ruben didn’t respond, but somewhere, deep down, John hoped that Ruben appreciated the clear statement of intent.
“For me, it’s not about testifying in court,” John added. “It’s about the truth. I want to hear him say in his own words what he did to Emelie Bjurwall.”
“Isn’t the semen enough to convince you? It was found only a few meters from the girl’s blood.”
“I know,” said John. “And as long as he doesn’t have a good explanation for that, it’s hard to believe anything except that he’s guilty.”
“At the same time, that’s exactly why it doesn’t work for me.”
John looked at Ruben in surprise. This wasn’t just a momentary crack in his poker face. The man was showing his entire hand.
“What do you mean?”
“I think it wouldn’t have been especially difficult for your brother to come up with an alternative story for why his semen was on the rocks. He could have claimed he’d masturbated there. When I was a boy and lived at home, I took my dad’s porn mags into the great outdoors for a wank more than once. That might not have been any more plausible than him actually raping Emelie Bjurwall—especially given he has a prior complaint against him for a similar crime—but it would’ve been enough for reasonable doubt if the case had gone to trial. The whole investigation relied on that piece of evidence alone.”
John tried to keep up with his line of thought. “So, you think the fact that he can’t explain the semen makes it likelier that it’s not his?”
“Yes—in some weird way that’s the conclusion I’ve come to,” Ruben said, drumming his fingers on the wheel. “But it’s probably crazy to think like that. Perhaps he was cold-blooded enough to assume Emelie would never be found, which meant there was no need to come up with a lie. He knew the evidence wouldn’t be enough to charge him unless there was a body.”
John looked out through the windshield again. Perhaps there was something in his colleagu
e’s reasoning, even if it seemed far-fetched.
“You asked what happens now,” said Ruben.
John felt his palms go clammy, as Ruben continued. “I’ve not spoken to the boss yet. I wanted to find out what the situation was myself—see whether you were going to make contact with your brother and leak details of the investigation. But so far, all you seem to have done is drive by the house—so I’m willing to give you a chance to tell Primer yourself. He doesn’t need to know about our conversation here. With a little luck, he won’t throw you off the case. But it might also end in immediate dismissal and an internal investigation for gross professional misconduct.”
“I realize this is going to have professional consequences,” said John. “But the most important thing is that my true identity doesn’t get out. You have to understand that there are people out there who want nothing more than to see me dead.”
Ruben looked at him for a long time.
“You’re welcome to continue being Fredrik Adamsson as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “But it’s up to Primer.”
“I understand,” John said in a subdued voice.
His colleague started the engine—a clear sign the conversation was over.
“I’ll give you until the end of the week,” he said. “If you haven’t told Primer who you are by then, I will.”
22
After talking to Ruben, John took the car and parked up in the inner harbor area behind the Löfbergs Lila tower. While his childhood might have smelled of sulfur, the scent here was rather more pleasant. The Löfberg family had been roasting coffee beans for four generations in the tall building and were just as much associated with Karlstad as the local ice hockey team. John remembered the sticker with the bad pun that had been stuck on the break room wall in his father’s convenience store in Skoghall. The coffee with that lila bit extra.
He needed a walk. When it came to clearing his head, proximity to water was essential. In New York City, he had walked for hours along the East River, letting his thoughts wander freely. The harbor in Karlstad wasn’t as big, so after a few lengths back and forth he nipped into the only pub that was open on a weekday afternoon in October. It was called Rederiet—Swedish for “shipping company”—and was based on the ground floor of one of the new buildings.
John ordered an IPA from a brewery he had never heard of and put the keys to the Chrysler on the bar. A few men of his own age seemed to have sneaked out of work to grab a beer or two before family life came calling. At the table closest to the door there was a woman sharing a plate of pasta with her young son. The child wasn’t even school age yet and was driving his mother mad with his demands for more ketchup.
Only once half the beer had been drunk did John take off his coat and hang it on a hook under the bar. He thought about what had happened at the tattoo parlor—how he had been convinced that Ganiru’s hitmen had found him, and the bodily collapse that had come about as a result of the paranoia. The doctor in Baltimore had been right. There was something wrong with his head. When danger approached—anything that reminded him of the experience in the container port—his brain short-circuited. She had wanted to send him to see a shrink, but that was where he had drawn the line. Nothing good would come from rooting around in the past.
He drained his beer in one final gulp and ordered the same again. The kid with the pasta began to cry because his mother had taken the ketchup bottle out of his hand. John turned in their direction to discover that the woman was already looking at him. She pursed her lips, her expression hostile. He couldn’t understand it. If there was anyone who had a right to be irritated, it was him and the other patrons who were having their peace and quiet ruined by her bratty child.
Suddenly, he had a vivid image of Trevor. Whether it was the kid or what had happened in the tattoo parlor that had brought his friend to mind he didn’t know. Perhaps a combination of both. John realized that he missed him: Trevor, who would never get to see his own child again. In moments like this, he wanted to talk to someone who understood him. Who knew what had happened in Baltimore. Who understood the risks he faced, now that he had to tell Primer that he was involved in the investigation of his own brother. All the things that no shrink in the world could understand.
John waved to the bartender.
“Can you keep an eye on this for me?” he said, pointing at the glass.
Then he took his car keys and hurried to the car, where he grabbed his bag with the laptop. Two minutes later, he was back in the pub. He opened the machine and turned it so that no one except him could see the screen. The login details for the secure email service that Trevor had given him in the hospital were in an encrypted file on his hard drive. On several occasions, he had been about to delete the file so that he wasn’t tempted to get in touch with him. Today he was glad he’d kept it.
He opened the browser, logged in and began to write an email to his friend. However, the thoughts racing through his head wouldn’t translate into text on the screen. He kept trying and there was always something wrong. His fingertips were wet from the moist glass. He had to put the chafing car key in his trouser pocket back on the bar. His bladder needed emptying.
After almost an hour, all he managed to squeeze out was half a page of maudlin sentimentality. He read this crap and then erased it all with a long press of the delete key. He watched as the cursor consumed the letters, waiting until the screen was empty. Then he wrote a much shorter message. Arrived. What about you? J.
He hesitated before hitting send. Trevor had said the service was encrypted, but John knew that every code could be cracked. At the same time, it would be more or less impossible for the Nigerians to find this exact email in the global flood of data washing over the planet each and every second. If they were careful about the contents of their messages, everything would be fine.
Trevor’s words echoed in his ears.
We’re going to become very lonely people, you and I.
Amen to that, brother, John thought to himself as he raised his glass in a toast to his distant friend.
Then he sent the email and shut the laptop. One of the guys enjoying a post-work drink stood beside him to order a new round. The man looked at him quizzically. John thought he was bothered by the laptop taking up space at the bar so he put it back in his bag on the floor. But the guy continued to scrutinize him and shook his head demonstratively before disappearing back to his table with the bottles of beer.
What the hell was that all about? Why is everyone here treating me like shit?
The phone in his inside pocket vibrated, preventing him from confronting the man and asking him whether he had a problem.
“It’s Lost Property calling,” said a Värmlander’s leisurely voice. “I just wanted to say that I’ve finished your list of phones and sent it over by email.”
John thanked him, and his mood instantly improved. The man on the phone belonged to that rarest breed of police officers—ones who worked more than they talked.
After ending the call, he got his laptop back out of the bag and put it on the bar again. It didn’t take long to pull up Fredrik Adamsson’s work email.
His hero in Lost Property was as concise in writing as he was on the phone. As promised was all it said in the subject line. But the attached file was far more extensive. He opened it and scrolled down. The rows flashing by contained dates, objects, details of notifiers, and find locations.
John pondered how to tackle the list. The most reasonable approach was to start from the beginning. If Emelie’s phone had slipped out of her pocket when her body was being moved, it was probable that it would have been found during the initial period after her disappearance.
John went to August 2009, the first month after Emelie Bjurwall had been reported missing. Five iPhone 3G mobiles had been handed in to Lost Property. Four had been found in central Karlstad, making them less interesting. All things considered, the perpetrator was not going to have dumped Emelie in the main square in the center of town. Th
e fifth had been found at a rest area on the road to Skutberget. John noted the time and place on a napkin. He remembered the popular swimming pool by the campsite. There had been a water slide there; he and Billy had nagged their parents to go to it. He couldn’t remember what the terrain alongside the road looked like, but maybe it was wooded.
He continued on to September and October 2009. The number of iPhones found had increased as the phones became more popular. All phones found in proximity to water or adjacent to wooded areas were added to the napkin but none of them felt right. The places where they had been found weren’t isolated enough nor on a natural route for a driver leaving Hammarö.
When John looked out of the window, he noticed that it was nearly dusk. The lights along the quay had come on, illuminating the handful of boats at anchor this late in the season. He requested a bowl of peanuts to ease the worst of his hunger and returned to his list. Halfway through November, he found an entry where the phone in question had been found on Hammarö. He read the details of its location with increasing interest.
Woods along the Hallerudsleden road close to the old dump. Approx. one hundred meters into the woods in the ravine toward the hollow, on the far side of the parking area just after the turn for Sätterstrand.
John checked the column for other comments. The phone had been destroyed long ago and there were no remarks regarding the owner. He pulled up a satellite image of Hammarö on his phone and used his fingers to slowly follow Hallerudsleden from above. It ran from the fancier areas on the island past Skoghall and on toward the southern tip of the island.
The disused dump was easy to find on the map, as was the parking spot. He examined the broad green areas on either side of the road and had to remind himself not to be overly excited. The idea about the phone was still just a guess. He remembered what Hallerudsleden looked like, though. It was the shortest route from his childhood home to the mill and sometimes Dad had let the brothers take turns sitting on his lap to steer when they had gone to collect Mom from work.