The Chosen (19 page)

‘Which makes the hunt itself even more interesting. Why was that so important to him?’

Alex’s face was distorted with anger when he replied.

‘It’s more than interesting, it’s downright sadistic. The boys must have set off thinking they had a chance of escape. Which they never had. The murders are ritualistic, for
fuck’s sake. Don’t ask me how, I just know that there was nothing random about what we saw out there. The hunt, the bare feet, the paper bags – they’re all
connected.’

Fredrika had to agree.

Alex rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward.

‘So can we assume that the murder of the teacher was also ritualistic, even though we haven’t found any evidence to suggest that?’

‘That’s what I’m wondering,’ Fredrika said. ‘The differences in the MO could be down to the fact that the perpetrator wanted it to look as if the murders were
unconnected, but then surely he wouldn’t have been so careless as to use the same gun.’

‘Exactly. Which makes the whole thing so bloody cocky. He doesn’t care if we realise he’s involved in both crimes. He doesn’t even try to hide it.’

‘Perhaps that was the idea: the murders were carried out in such different ways so that we’d end up sitting here scratching our heads and wondering who we’re looking
for.’

Alex stared at her for a long time.

‘You’re a wise woman,’ he said eventually.

Fredrika blushed.

‘I just mean . . .’

‘I know what you mean, and you’re right. Even if you’re wrong. We’re wasting time, trying to find an explanation for two such different murders, when in fact we only need
to solve one in order to find the person responsible for both.’

Fredrika nodded slowly.

‘So you think we should leave Josephine’s murder with the National Crime Unit after all?’

‘For the time being, we carry on working separately; we’ll probably meet in the middle at some point anyway.’

That sounded logical.

‘Do you seriously believe the only reason behind Josephine’s murder was to confuse us?’ Fredrika said.

She could hear the doubt in her voice, and did nothing to hide it.

‘No. But I do think that we shouldn’t ignore leads just because they don’t match both cases. Do you have a third hypothesis, or would you like to hear mine?’

Fredrika thought for a moment. The smell of the food was less than pleasant, and she wished it wasn’t too cold to open a window, get some fresh air and a shot of energy.

‘I do have one more theory,’ she said. ‘The victims weren’t taken by chance. He knew exactly who he was after.’

‘Good. I agree. I think our killer is driven by personal motives. The Solomon Community’s fear that we’re dealing with a crazy serial killer hell bent on murdering Jews is
groundless. He doesn’t give a toss if they’re Jews or Arabs or Chinese. This is personal.’

‘In which case there must be a link between the boys and the teacher.’

‘Absolutely, but we’re not going to start there. We’re going to start with what we have.’

‘Which is?’

‘I have a feeling that the Goldmann and Eisenberg families are being a little circumspect about why they left Israel. It may be of no relevance to the inquiry, but I still want to know
what they’re not telling us. And there’s something else.’

Fredrika’s stomach contracted.

‘The Paper Boy,’ she said.

‘Exactly. The boy who called himself the Paper Boy online is found dead with a paper bag over his head. Is that supposed to be a coincidence?’

‘Maybe not. The only problem there is that his friend, who called himself the Warrior, was also found dead with a paper bag over his head. We have to be able to explain both deaths, not
just one.’

‘True. The Paper Boy is supposed to refer to some Israeli myth that I’ve never heard of,’ Alex said. ‘It could be that this myth has nothing whatsoever to do with the
case, but I still want to know more.’

He looked up with a wry smile.

‘Didn’t you say Spencer was going to Israel? We might have to give him a little job to do while he’s there.’

Fredrika managed a smile in return.

Spencer on a mission in the Promised Land. It was an entertaining but unimaginable concept.

‘Just joking,’ Alex said.

As if that wasn’t obvious. At that moment his mobile rang. Fredrika ate a little more while he was on the phone, but she had lost her appetite. Inside she was in chaos after everything
that had happened, while outside heavy snow was falling once more. And somewhere in between, in a no-man’s-land that she couldn’t even begin to define, she and Alex were supposed
to take a murder investigation in the right direction.

She chewed, swallowed.

Alex ended the call.

‘That was the secretary at the Solomon school. She rang to tell me about a pot plant that was sent to them anonymously following Josephine’s death.’

‘And?’

‘It arrived in a paper bag with a face drawn on it.’

T
he stairwell was in darkness. A door opened a couple of floors above, then the light came on. Footsteps on the stairs. Muted crying from one of the apartments. Efraim Kiel thought the child
responsible was probably very young; the sound lacked any real strength. It was a long time since Efraim had been a parent, but the memory lingered.

It had taken a while to shake off his Säpo shadows. This time it had been essential to ensure that they didn’t follow him; if they had, it would have caused big problems.

Even bigger than the problems he already had.

Efraim’s frustration was bordering on intolerable. Whoever had decided to start leaving him messages was starting to get careless. The note outside his hotel room had been nothing
short of stupid. It wasn’t just that the person could easily have been spotted – it was almost as if he or she
wanted
to be caught.

The tone of the messages was playful, but Efraim knew what they really meant. Someone was following him, and that wasn’t good. Particularly in view of the fact that the individual in
question was calling himself the Paper Boy.

He had gone to see Peder Rydh again, and that had got him thinking.

Rydh had done his job at long last, and looked for something that could be a calling card. He didn’t seem to understand the importance of what he had found.

A paper bag with a face drawn on it.

The discovery terrified Efraim.

The plant and the bag had been sent to the Solomon Community after the schoolteacher had been shot, but before the boys were found on the golf course. And that told Efraim everything he
needed to know.

Now he was almost sure he knew who had contacted him.

Someone passed him on the stairs and carried on down to the ground floor. He couldn’t stay here. He was running the risk of being noticed if he didn’t move soon.

Why had he actually come here? So that he would know where she lived in case he ever needed to get hold of her in a hurry. He read the nameplate on the door one last time.

‘E & M Lundell’.

Good. So this was where Eden had settled down with her husband and children. He looked at the lock; he would be surprised if it was easy to force, but on the other hand he didn’t think it
would be impossible.

He turned away and went back down the stairs. Personally he would have preferred to live a couple of floors higher up. Distance was good – in all directions. He left the building and cut across
Sankt Eriksplan, heading towards Vasa Park.

He never saw the woman standing at the bus stop on Torsgatan as he crossed the road. Nor did he notice when she set off after him.

A
paper bag with a face drawn on it.

Three victims shot with the same gun, but on two different occasions.

Fredrika Bergman couldn’t take her eyes off the bag in which the chrysanthemum had been delivered to the Solomon Community. It had been picked up from Östermalm by a patrol car
and brought to HQ before being sent on to the National Forensics Lab for analysis.

Alex had asked to see it first, and now they were standing in his office, staring at it.

‘What the hell are we missing here?’ he said, his voice suffused with annoyance. ‘A paper bag. With eyes, a nose and a mouth. What’s the message, and who is it meant
for?’

Fredrika thought about the boys lying in the snow and the paper bags someone had pulled over their heads. At the time she had believed the bags were a nod to an as yet unidentified recipient,
then she had wondered if they could be the killer’s calling card. This new discovery strengthened that view.

But there was something that didn’t fit.

‘Tell me what you’re thinking,’ Alex said, his tone brusque, challenging.

Fredrika took her time before she spoke. She looked closely at the bag: the large eyes, the pointed nose, the gaping mouth.

She found the photographs of the bags that had been over the boys’ heads.

She studied them in detail, then passed them to Alex.

‘Look,’ she said.

Alex stared at the photographs.

‘And now look at this,’ she said, pointing to the bag from the school.

Alex made the same comparison. He didn’t speak for a moment.

‘They’re different,’ he said eventually.

‘I agree. The bags from Lovön are similar, but not identical. The bag the plant was in . . .’

She paused.

‘Look at the face. It’s much more aggressive. And drawn in different colours.’

The eyes on this bag were coloured blue. The noses were different too: short lines on the original bags, considerably bigger on this one.

‘You think we’re looking for different perpetrators?’ Alex said.

The doubt in his voice told Fredrika that he didn’t share her point of view, if that was the case.

‘I don’t think we can rule it out,’ she said.

She sat down and went on:

‘First of all our perpetrator shoots a woman outside the Solomon school. He does so while lying on his stomach on a rooftop on the opposite side of the street. By the time the police
arrive, he has managed to get off the roof and leave the building without anyone seeing him. But he doesn’t stop there. Instead he gets in a car an hour later and picks up Simon and Abraham. Keeps them overnight, and shoots them the following morning.’

Alex was still holding the paper bag. The gloves he was wearing covered the scars on his hands from the time when he saved a child from burning to death.

Fredrika looked away. She didn’t want to think about children being burned or hurt in any other way.

‘Does that sound reasonable to you?’ she said. ‘The idea that the same person did all that?’

‘What evidence do we have to suggest that there’s more than one perpetrator? Concrete evidence, I mean?’

Fredrika took a deep breath.

‘None at all.’

‘We need to inform the National Crime Unit,’ Alex said. ‘As I said before, we’ll continue to investigate the two crimes separately, but I’m afraid we have to accept
what the evidence is telling us: there is only one perpetrator.’

He put down the bag. ‘Okay?’

Fredrika nodded. The days when she and Alex stood in opposite corners fighting over which direction the investigation should take were long gone. The team was too small now; she
couldn’t afford to fly solo any more.

The soloist.

That was what Spencer had called her when they first got to know one another almost twenty years ago. When their love was secret, her desire overwhelming. She had loved him so much back then.
She still did. They had both been worried about how they would cope with ordinary everyday life together, but on the whole it had gone unexpectedly well.

The weekend loomed before her like an iceberg. In only two days’ time Spencer would be leaving for Jerusalem. Fredrika had spoken to her mother, who had promised to help out with the children.

She straightened up. Wished she was somewhere else, perhaps with the orchestra. The violin made her feel safe; her job didn’t. Not the way things were right now.

Playing the violin was pure enjoyment.

Dead children were about as far from enjoyment as you could possibly get.

As Fredrika was on her way out of Alex’s office, a thought suddenly struck him.

‘Why did the secretary react to the way the bag looked?’ he said.

Fredrika turned back.

‘What do you mean?’

‘We haven’t said a word to the press about the bags we found over the boys’ heads. So why did she think it was worth mentioning that someone had drawn on this bag?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Fredrika said. ‘You were the one who spoke to her.’

Alex picked up his phone and called the school.

‘What was it about that paper bag that made you call the police?’ he said. ‘Why did you think it would be of interest in our inquiries?’

The secretary sounded surprised.

‘I didn’t, to be honest.’

Now it was Alex’s turn to be surprised.

‘So why did you call?’

‘It wasn’t my idea. Our new head of security suggested it. Peder Rydh.’

Alex thought fast, trying to understand.

‘You showed the bag to Peder first?’

‘No, he found it himself. He came and asked me if we’d received anything odd after Josephine and the boys were murdered, and then he started looking at the wrapping that the plants
and flowers had come in. Why he thought a paper bag would be of interest to the police, I have no idea.’

Nor had Alex. And that bothered him.

Had Peder known what he was looking for among the wrapping? And if so, who was feeding him the information?

T
he discovery should have pleased him. He had found a significant clue; both Efraim Kiel and the police had confirmed that. If Alex hadn’t thought the paper bag was interesting, he
wouldn’t have had it picked up so quickly.

The only problem was that no one had told Peder Rydh why the bag was so bloody important. In fact, he felt really stupid. He had reacted when he saw the bag in reception, thought it looked
different from all the rest and wondered why. But would he have noticed it if Efraim Kiel hadn’t talked about calling cards? He wasn’t so sure.

The question now was how much he should tell Alex and Fredrika. Without anyone actually putting it into words, he had realised that Efraim Kiel was no ordinary security expert. Apparently he had
travelled all the way from Israel to assist the Solomon Community to recruit a new head of security; that said something about his background, and even more about the importance the community
attached to appointing the right man.