The Chosen (12 page)

She looked at the bags. Brown, sturdy. With big faces drawn on the front.

‘It seems as if whoever shot the boys wanted to tell us something,’ Alex said. ‘With the bags, I mean. Have you checked if there’s anything written on them?’ he asked one of the CSIs.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing. The only thing of interest is the face on each one. I’ll take them back to the lab and check them over.’

They could always hope, of course. With a bit of luck the killer would have suffered an attack of megalomania, and would have left his or her fingerprints all over the thick paper. Or used a
very rare pen that would be easy to trace. Somehow.

Fredrika was very downhearted. They wouldn’t find a single thing on those bags; she felt it in every fibre of her body.

‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’ she said. ‘For example, how did the boys get here?’

‘Good question. You can see the boys’ footprints,’ the CSI said, pointing. ‘They ran quite a distance through the forest over there; we’ve been able to follow them
all the way to a narrow track that branches off Lovövägen. The most likely scenario is that they managed to escape from their abductor, but I’ve no idea how that happened.
Hopefully the forensic pathologist will be able to tell us more on the basis of their injuries.’

Fredrika shuddered. She couldn’t take her eyes off the children’s bare feet in the sparkling snow. Who knew what they had been forced to endure before they managed to get away? And
in the end they had both been shot dead.

They must have been terrified.

‘You said you were able to follow their footprints,’ Alex said. ‘That must mean they didn’t get away until it had stopped snowing.’

‘Exactly. The tracks are very clear and well preserved. I think they were running in daylight, with the weather on their side. And the shots were fired less than an hour ago.’

They had been given that information in the car on the way over, along with the news that Säpo had been called out first, because the shots had been heard by the guards in the palace
gardens.

‘How much time elapsed between the two shots?’ Fredrika asked.

The CSI frowned and thought for a moment.

‘You’ll have to double-check the witness statements, but I think it was about twenty minutes.’

Alex didn’t say anything, and Fredrika saw his jaw tense as it so often did when he was thinking. Twenty minutes between the shots, yet the boys had gone down fifty metres apart. How was
that possible?

‘I can’t make any sense of this,’ Fredrika said.

‘Me neither.’ Alex shook his head. ‘So let’s imagine they managed to get away from whoever abducted them. That they ran off together. Obviously the perpetrator went after
them, and . . .’

He was interrupted by the CSI.

‘They didn’t run together. There’s a whole tangle of footprints among the trees over there. It’s clear that they ran in different directions, but it seems likely
that they both spotted the golf course and decided to get out of the forest and head for open ground.’

Fredrika could understand that. A golf course would make them think of some kind of civilisation, the hope of meeting a saviour even though it was the middle of winter. Then again, could you
actually tell it was a golf course? She looked around and decided you couldn’t. The flags that normally marked the holes had been removed, and the course resembled nothing more than a gigantic white field.

‘Children act on instinct,’ Alex said. They don’t like dark forests. If they see an alternative, they’ll go for it.’

‘But they would have had more protection in the forest,’ Fredrika objected.

‘I’m not sure they were thinking logically.’

Fredrika thought he was probably right.

‘What can you tell us about the perpetrator’s tracks?’ she said. ‘Or was there more than one?’

She hadn’t really thought about that possibility before she spoke. There could have been more than one person hunting children out on the island.

She and Alex exchanged a look of mutual understanding. The boys might not even have chosen to leave the cover of the trees; they might just as well have been driven out.

But the CSI shook her head.

‘We’ve found prints made by only one pair of shoes. Either we have two killers wearing shoes that are exactly the same size and make, or the children were shot by the same person,
which seems more likely.’

The golf course was cold and desolate. Fredrika adjusted her scarf and pulled on her gloves. She wanted to get back in the car, gather her thoughts and digest what she had seen.

The forensic technicians came forward with stretchers. Gently they freed the boys from their icy bed, ready to be transferred to the forensic laboratory in Solna.

‘We need to inform the parents,’ Fredrika said.

She glanced at the police tape that cordoned off the entire area. The first journalists had already appeared. So far all they knew was that shots had been heard in the vicinity of Drottningholm Palace, and that the police had discovered something, but Fredrika was well aware that it was only a matter of
time before they learned that the boys had been found.

‘Already in hand,’ Alex said. ‘The mothers are still in the centre, and the fathers have been asked to join them there.’

There were routine procedures for everything, even for the cruellest, most unthinkable news.

Fredrika couldn’t imagine anything worse than being taken aside in the middle of searching for her missing child, and being told that the child was dead.

‘Come on, let’s get back,’ Alex said.

As they turned away, Fredrika couldn’t stop thinking about the paper bags with the faces drawn on them. There must be a message, but she couldn’t see it. Perhaps she wasn’t
supposed to; the message could be meant for someone else. In which case the question was whether that person would come forward, or whether he or she would have to be tracked down.

T
he triumph of good over evil was a recurring theme in the stories Peder Rydh read to his children. It was also a principle that meant a great deal to him.

We get what we deserve.

Past sins may grow old, but they should never be forgotten; there is always time for vengeance.

Just once he had taken on the role of executioner. It had cost him his job, but had probably saved his sanity. He had no idea of what might save Simon and Abraham’s parents.

The boys had been found shot dead, not far from Drottningholm Palace.

In the Solomon Community centre the news was received with shock and sorrow. The silence that followed was so dense that Peder could almost touch it. One by one, the members left. Went home to
their families. Back to their lives. Eternally grateful that tragedy had struck someone else and not them.

Peder stayed behind. It was a devastating start to a job that only yesterday had seemed challenging and exciting.

For the second time in as many days, parents from the Solomon Community were being taken to a forensic laboratory to formally identify their dead children. It was incomprehensible.

He found a quiet corner and called Ylva. He wanted to hear her voice, know that she was okay.

‘What’s going on?’ she said.

Anxious.

There was no way she was going to let him drag more crap into their lives. That was what she really wanted to say.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Is there a connection? Between what happened yesterday, and this?’

Was there?

The police didn’t seem to think so.

Peder was trying to stay out of the police investigation; he knew he didn’t belong there any more. But if he had still been a serving officer, if he had been a part of Alex’s new
team . . . He would have slammed his fist down on the table.

Because he was convinced the cases were linked.

When he had finished talking to Ylva, he went into the room that had been designated as his office. The security team at the Solomon Community had conducted a parallel interview of their own
with everyone who had witnessed the murder of the pre-school teacher after the police had spoken to them. Interview was probably the wrong word; the community didn’t have that kind of
authority. But they had talked to the three parents who had been standing next to Josephine, and to the people who had been passing by at the time. They hadn’t spoken to the children.

Peder read through their notes, but found nothing useful.

Frustrated, he went through the material the team had put together, but couldn’t find what he was looking for. How could the community find out what the murder weapon was? Or any details
about distance and the trajectory of the bullet? Or if there were any suspects among the victim’s circle of acquaintances?

Actually the media had answered the last question; as usual they had been fed by leaks from within the police. Josephine’s boyfriend had a string of convictions for serious crimes. Peder
guessed that the police would conclude that she had been dragged into some kind of transaction, either willingly or under duress, and had ended up as a victim of organised crime.

Peder didn’t agree.

This crime was spectacular. Cocky. As daring as picking up two boys in a car and driving off with them.

What was the best way to proceed? Would he be able to persuade Alex that it was essential for him to sit in on some of their briefings? He needed access to their investigation if he was going to
get anywhere.

He broke off his train of thought.

What the fuck was he doing?

He wasn’t going to ‘get anywhere’. He was no longer an investigator, he was head of security. It was time to get to grips with his new job, familiarise himself with his team.
The general secretary had had a long conversation with him, explained how the community viewed Peder’s role. He had also explained how the security team worked and what their working routine
was.

There was a knock on his door. The sound made him jump and shout ‘Come in’ rather too loudly.

The general secretary came in.

‘I’m extremely concerned,’ he said, closing the door behind him.

Peder listened.

‘Tell me honestly, do you think either of the dreadful crimes that have shaken our community over the past twenty-four hours could be motivated by anti-Semitism? Or could there really be
completely different reasons behind them?’

It was a straight question, and it deserved a straight answer. Had Josephine or the two boys been killed because they were Jewish, or not?

‘I can’t tell you that,’ Peder said. ‘I don’t know enough.’

‘What do you think about the police’s main line of enquiry with regard to Josephine? The idea that the murder is linked to her boyfriend?’

Peder didn’t hesitate.

‘I think there’s a different explanation. But once again – I have too little information to draw any conclusions.’

The general secretary gazed at him.

‘In that case I hope you will come up with a way of acquiring more information, because many members of our community are terrified.’

Terrified?

‘Of what?’

‘They are terrified that they or their children are next in line to be executed. Because Josephine, Simon and Abraham were killed by a murderer who will return to our community to seek out
further victims.’

S
o the boys were dead. Hunted down and shot. Alex Recht knew that he couldn’t do anything useful until he had the preliminary report from the forensic pathologist.

Which should tell him how the boys had been killed. And what they had been subjected to before they died.

He thought about the impressions their feet had left in the snow. How far could you run if you were ten years old, barefoot, frozen, and had been awake for hours on end? If you could trust the
tracks in the snow, they had got quite a long way.

Alex tried to set aside his own emotional reaction to the case that had landed on his desk. Fredrika had mentioned Lilian Sebastiansson, a little girl who had gone missing from a train one
summer’s day a few years ago. Several children had disappeared, and only one had survived, with severe burns. Alex would never forget, because he had been there. Seen the flames burst into
life, raced towards the child to save him. His hands still bore the scars.

Was this something similar? Another bloody lunatic going after the youngest, the most vulnerable? Alex looked at the photographs from the edge of the golf course. A fractured pattern of
footprints in the snow. Two boys lying on their backs, with paper bags on their heads.

Those fucking bags.

What did they mean?

If it hadn’t been for the faces drawn on them, Alex might have thought the bags were there simply to alleviate the murderer’s sense of regret, or whatever the hell you felt when
you had killed two children.

But the faces.

Eyes, nose, mouth. A large mouth. Impossible to tell if it was laughing or screaming.

The paper bags worried him, because they made the whole thing even more sick. And if it was sick, then it was also irrational, which meant there was no way of knowing what to expect.

A ghostly voice whispered in Alex’s ear.

Serial killer.

Were they dealing with a serial killer? If so, there would be more victims. With paper bags pulled over their heads.

But serial killers were unusual. Not even unusual, to be honest. They were virtually non-existent. Not in real life, anyway.

Alex stared at the material in front of him. What did they know, and what could they rule out? To begin with, the gun put paid to the idea that the whole thing could have been a game that had
gone wrong. So did the fact that the boys had been missing for a whole night before they died. Nor did it seem like a kidnapping that had gone wrong; the parents hadn’t been contacted. Unless
of course they had been contacted, but hadn’t informed the police.

But why would that happen?

Which left two alternatives.

Perhaps the whole thing was a terrible coincidence. The boys had somehow bumped into a killer who had selected his victims on a whim, which meant that any child could have been abducted.