The Chosen (44 page)

It was a weak answer. Why would she have come hurtling over here to find that out?

But Alex didn’t seem to have time to ponder such an anomaly.

‘Do you remember my asking you about the Paper Boy?’ he said.

Eden nodded.

‘We now know who he is,’ Alex said proudly.

Eden couldn’t believe her ears. How was that possible? Surely the Israelis wouldn’t have shared such sensitive information with Fredrika Bergman?

‘A deranged child killer,’ Alex said.

She waited for him to tell her the rest: that the Paper Boy had been a secret source working for the Israelis, but instead he told her a completely different story.

Fifteen minutes later Eden Lundell was standing on Polhemsgatan, smoking a cigarette.

Two Paper Boys.

Two stories.

Alex’s theory was more convincing than hers. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better. Kudos to Fredrika for her efforts in Israel. She had found out an astonishing amount in a very
short time, information they would never have got from anyone else.

She felt the weight of her mobile in her pocket and thought about calling Mikael again, telling him they could stay at home.

But that would annoy him even more. Mikael wasn’t the kind of person who could deal with mixed messages. Better to let them go to the apartment in Södermalm.

Eden stubbed out her cigarette and went inside. It wasn’t until she was in the lift on the way back to her office that she realised what she had done. That cigarette was the first one she
had smoked since she arrived back in Sweden. She hadn’t missed them for several hours.

The decision was made before the lift doors opened.

She yanked the packet of cigarettes out of her pocket, dropped them in the waste bin along with her lighter.

Eden Lundell had smoked her last cigarette.

I
nterview rooms were always too small. The air was always too stale, the light always a little too bright. They had started the second session, and Alex Recht didn’t care if he had to stay
there all night. Saul Goldmann was going to start talking, and soon.

‘You can carry on telling me you left your phone in your apartment. You can carry on telling me that you can’t be responsible for the location of Mona Samson’s phone when you
called her. But let me make one thing clear: Mona Samson has retracted her previous statement. She says you left her apartment at two o’clock. And guess what? We believe her.’

Alex left the words hanging in the air, waiting for Saul Goldmann’s counter-move.

He had changed during the short break. He was a broken man.

‘Is she here?’ he said. ‘Mona – is she here too?’

‘No. But you are.’

Mona Samson’s whereabouts were still unclear. She had told the police she was on a business trip to Norway; she had called from a different mobile on a withheld number, said if they wanted
to get hold of her they could use the number they already had. It would take time to find out the new number and track the location of the phone. After speaking to her they had tried the old number, but the phone was switched off. They had asked her to come to Police HQ at her earliest
convenience, but Alex suspected that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

Saul Goldmann held up his hands in a defensive gesture.

‘Okay. I lied. I admit it, I lied. But I had nothing to do with Abraham’s murder. Nothing at all.’

He swallowed hard, clasped his hands on the table. Looked down and paused for a moment before continuing.

‘It’s true, Abraham wasn’t my biological son. And it’s true that my father was the so-called Paper Boy. It was because of him that I had a vasectomy when I was only
twenty; I was obsessed with the idea that I might be like him, that I would never be a good parent. It took time to get over what had happened, but my mother made sure I got help. Professional
help. When Daphne and I moved in together I tried to have the vasectomy reversed, because I’d heard that was possible. But not in my case.’

He looked very sad.

‘They said complications must have arisen, and there was nothing they could do. So we went down the IVF route with donated sperm. It was a mutual decision. We both longed for children, and
Abraham was very much a wanted baby when he was born.’

The words simply flowed; no prompting was necessary. Alex listened in silence.

‘Daphne and I have been together for over twenty years. There is no woman in the world that I love more, but you know how it is; things get a little . . . dull. That’s what
happened to us, and then Mona turned up. Very attractive, expressive, vibrant. She worked for an Israeli company in the process of setting up branches in Sweden. Mona is half-Israeli, half-Palestinian. I can’t explain why, but I fell for her.
Slept with her the first time we met, then carried on in Stockholm.’

He shrugged, looking slightly puzzled, as if he couldn’t quite understand why he was telling the police about his private life.

‘We met at her apartment last Wednesday. Had some sushi, went to bed. I left at two, but I was so tired I went home and had a sleep. She has that effect on men. You give her what she
wants, and you can hardly remember a thing afterwards. When I got home I realised I’d left my iPad in her apartment. That was why I called her, to find out when I could pick it up. Abraham
would wonder where it was, and I didn’t want to end up in a situation where I had to start coming up with a whole load of explanations. But she was difficult to get hold of, and when I did
speak to her she said she was tied up with meetings, and wouldn’t be available for the next few days. She sent me the iPad by courier later that evening. Not exactly discreet.’

He changed position on the uncomfortable chair, seeking the right words for what he wanted to say next.

‘Although of course nobody reacted to the business with the iPad, because by then we realised that something had happened to Abraham. Daphne went over to the Solomon Community, and Gideon
and I began searching for the boys. We started near the tennis centre, then moved further and further away. The police wanted to speak to us, of course, so we had to interrupt the search for a
while. And I was in a complete panic.’

Another defensive gesture, and this time he glanced at his lawyer.

‘I didn’t want to tell anyone why I’d been at home having an afternoon nap when Abraham went missing. I’d told Daphne and my work colleagues that I had a meeting, so I
stuck to that and asked Mona to say the same if you contacted her. She was reluctant at first, but I persuaded her that it was the best thing to do. For the sake of the investigation. If you
had to waste time following up a lot of unnecessary minor leads, you would lose the rhythm, and might not find the boys.’

Saul’s shoulders slumped.

‘But that’s what happened anyway,’ he said.

And that was the end of his account.

Alex remained silent, taking in what he had heard. He felt completely at a loss; he didn’t know what to think.

The story worked. Saul Goldmann still lacked a confirmed alibi for the time when the boys disappeared, but Alex knew he was telling the truth. Saul had shown different aspects of his character;
the lack of that information had led Alex to judge his reaction to his son’s death as abnormal.

But he still had questions.

‘Mona Samson – do you have a picture of her?’

‘Our relationship isn’t, or wasn’t, the kind that involves going around with photographs of each other in our wallets.’

No picture. But Alex had a picture. Not of Mona Samson, perhaps, but of the woman who had brought a chrysanthemum to the Solomon Community after Josephine had been shot. And he had brought
it with him to the interview room.

‘Is this Mona Samson?’

He handed Saul the sketch. Saul gazed at it for a long time.

‘Hard to say, but it could be her.’

Alex took back the drawing. ‘It could be her’ wasn’t definitive enough, but it had been worth a try. He changed tack.

‘What do you know about her company?’

‘The basics. We never actually did business together.’

‘Would you be surprised if I told you that the mother company in Israel, which she used to register with the Tax Office, doesn’t exist?’

Saul’s eyes widened.

‘I didn’t check,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think it was necessary.’

He was more co-operative now, and Alex wanted to make the most of that.

‘Why did you leave Israel in 2002?’

‘I’ve already told you.’

‘I’d like you to tell me again. And this time you can cut the crap about the firm you were working for, because we know that both you and Gideon were employed by the Israeli
military until you moved.’

Saul’s expression changed. His posture grew more erect as he stood guard over his past.

‘There are clearly defined limits when it comes to what I can tell you about my professional background,’ he said. ‘It’s true that I was in the Israeli armed forces, but
I can’t go into which branch or what my work involved.’

‘Not even if it has something to do with your son’s murder?’

No answer.

‘Tell me why you moved.’

‘Because of something that happened on duty. An accident, you could say. Both Gideon and I had had enough after that. The risks and the level of personal commitment were too great. We were
both going to become fathers, and in 2002 Israel was literally in flames. A cavalcade of suicide bombers had turned the country into hell on earth, and the Israeli counter-offensive wasn’t
exactly moderate, of course. But we just wanted to get out of there, so we moved to Stockholm. We had both been here before, and knew one or two people. We thought we would be able to
establish ourselves in Sweden, and we were right.’

‘Efraim Kiel – how well do you know him?’

‘You’ve asked me that before as well. Efraim has the same background as me and Gideon. And Daphne. We worked together. But he chose to stay, both in Israel and in the military.
I have no idea what he’s doing these days.’

‘Have you had any contact with him while he’s been in Stockholm?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think he has anything to do with the deaths of Simon and Abraham?’

For the first time Saul dropped the mask completely.

‘Efraim? No, definitely not. Why would he do such a thing?’

Suddenly Alex had had enough.

‘That’s my fucking point!
Why would someone do such a thing to you and Gideon?
I don’t believe for a moment that you have no idea.’

Saul’s reaction was not what Alex had expected. He became completely calm. Relaxed a fraction, looked Alex straight in the eye.

‘Of course I have an idea,’ he said. ‘What astonishes me is that you apparently don’t.’

Alex felt control shift over to Saul, and there was nothing he could do about it. Saul realised what was happening, and grew in stature.

‘I was intending to deal with the matter myself, but if you’d like to help, then of course I would welcome your input.’

Deal with the matter myself?

‘Gideon,’ Saul said, uttering the name like a swear word. ‘Have you put the same energy into checking his alibi as you did with mine?’

Alex would like to think that was the case, but he didn’t know.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Liar!’

Saul Goldmann slammed his fist down on the table.

‘You’ve done no such thing. Gideon said he was in meetings all afternoon, but that’s not true. When I was driving home from Kungsholmen, after I’d been with Mona, I
saw him walking along Strandvägen and turning off onto Nybrogatan. It was about twenty past two. I asked him about it, but he said I was mistaken, and that he’d been in a meeting with
the bank then. No fucking way – I saw him from the car!’

Alex’s mouth went dry. This couldn’t be true. How many false alibis could these two come up with?

‘We’ll double check what you say, but I’m not expecting to find anything,’ he said, well aware of how feeble it sounded.

But Saul hadn’t finished.

‘Do you know why we don’t hang out together any more? Because we couldn’t have him around once we had a child. Gideon had more reasons than I did to leave Israel. There were rumours that he had been so damaged by what had happened to
him that he had started molesting boys – hitting them, threatening them with knives. Now do you understand? I defended him, said it was slander. But then I saw him with a young boy one night when
we were in a bar in Tel Aviv. And when I say a young boy, I mean a child who hadn’t yet reached puberty. They were standing out in the street, and it looked as if Gideon was trying to give
him money, but the boy ran away. After that I was more careful.’

Alex saw a chance to regain the upper hand.

‘But you let Abraham and Simon spend time together.’

‘Never at their house, unless Carmen was at home.’

‘So you think Gideon murdered both your son and his own? Because he is so damaged by what happened to him as a child?’

Saul’s eyes filled with tears.

‘You should see him without clothes. My father made a good attempt at turning his skin into a patchwork quilt. I think he said he has over fifty scars. You can’t go through something
like that and remain sane. It’s just not possible.’

The tears spilled over, and Saul dashed them away.

‘That night when we were searching for the boys, I saw Gideon. He was sitting in his car, staring into space. He had parked near the television centre. Do you know how many times I drove
past him? Five. He sat there all night; he never moved.’

Alex went cold inside.

‘And Polly?’ he said. ‘What has he done with Polly?’

‘The question you should be asking is why she’s not dead,’ Saul said.

Alex didn’t understand.

‘It’s not Gideon who’s taken her – it’s Carmen. Because she knows what a sick bastard she’s married to, and she’s hidden the only child she has
left.’

I
t was evening. Efraim Kiel suddenly realised he was kicking up the snow as he walked along; he had seen small children doing it, and he could understand why.

His heart was heavy as he remembered other children’s feet that had made the snow swirl up. Bare feet that grew cold, weakening their bodies.