The Disappeared (21 page)

With a background like that, it was hardly surprising that the police suspected Thea of murdering her son. It was obvious that she was both a sadist and a psychopath.

The door of her room opened again, and the same care assistant bustled in.

‘Your flowers have arrived. Every Saturday, regular as clockwork.’

With brisk movements she removed the vase containing last week’s flowers and came back with the fresh ones. She placed them on the bedside table, turning the vase so that Thea could read the card. She smiled at the scrawled message, which was always exactly the same: ‘Thanks’.

Don’t thank me, Thea thought. I owe you far more than you could ever imagine.

There had been a time before everything was destroyed. A good time. Her first book for children had been published towards the end of the 1950s. She had been very young, and in those days it was still possible for a best-selling author to live a quiet, anonymous life. Thea’s public appearances had been few and far between. She liked meeting her young readers, but had never regarded herself as being particularly fond of children. Her sporadic contact with her readers had been widely misunderstood; the newspapers said she was shy, which made her even more popular. When her stories about Dysia the angel began to sell abroad, the critics were beside themselves.

The books were described as unique, both in form and content. Dysia the angel was a different kind of fairytale heroine from the ones people were used to reading about in children’s literature. She was strong and independent. Honest. She was actually very much ahead of her time. During the ’50s and ’60s, women who fought for independence were still regarded as somewhat radical. Thea never commented on the issue of equality in the public debate, so instead people tried to work out her political views by examining her books.

They also examined her lifestyle. At the time when she still had her life under control, a small number of disparaging articles were written about her. At the age of twenty-five, she was unmarried and childless; a few years later, she was a single mother. Certain sections of society condemned her, others saw her as a role model. Several cultural commentators suggested that Thea’s choices in life characterised the modern woman.

There was only one person who knew the truth, and that was Thea herself. The fact was that she loathed her life as a single parent. And choice had never come into it.

She had given everything to the man she loved. And he had responded by committing the most serious crime of all.

INTERVIEW WITH FREDRIKA BERGMAN, 03-05-2009, 08.30 (tape recording)

Present: Urban S, Roger M (interrogators one and two). Fredrika Bergman (witness).

Urban: Let’s summarise the state of play in the investigation when you went home for the weekend on that Friday: 1) You didn’t believe that Håkan Nilsson was the murderer; 2) Nor did you believe that it was Gustav Sjöö, Rebecca’s supervisor; 3) You didn’t believe the photographs on the website had anything to do with the murderer. Have I understood you correctly?

Fredrika: We had to abandon the lines of inquiry that were deemed unproductive.

Roger: What was the status of Spencer Lagergren at this point?

Fredrika: I don’t understand the question.

Roger: In the investigation, I mean. Was he regarded as a suspect?

Fredrika: No, he was not.

Urban: Why not?

Fredrika: We had nothing linking him to the victim.

Urban: I would like to suggest that you most certainly did.

You actually had several concrete links between him and the victim.
Both
victims.

(Silence.)

Fredrika: Not on the Friday.

Roger: But you had found the brochure in which Rebecca had made a note of his name in red ink. That must have made you think.

Fredrika: Not really.

Urban: I see. But the fact that he was also the only person who could provide Gustav Sjöö with an alibi must have made you raise your eyebrows?

Fredrika: I hadn’t checked the investigation log when I went home; I didn’t know that Sjöö had named him.

Roger: Interesting. But you were up to speed on developments with regard to the pictures of Rebecca on the internet?

Fredrika: We had information to follow up on that aspect of the case. When it came to other aspects, it didn’t seem as if we had.

Urban: Aspects such as Spencer, for example.

(Silence.)

Roger: What conclusions did you reach about the pictures?

Fredrika: That Rebecca’s ex-girlfriend, Daniella, must have taken them. And uploaded them to the website.

Urban: Did that make her more or less of a suspect, in your eyes?

Fredrika: Less. I assumed she had done it because she was angry and felt betrayed.

Roger: What did Peder think?

Fredrika: I didn’t have the opportunity to discuss the matter with him over the weekend. I just rang Alex on the Saturday and told him what I had worked out.

Urban: How did he seem?

Fredrika: He sounded tired, but I think he was OK. He was going fishing with Torbjörn Ross.

Roger: And then a new working week began. What happened next?

Fredrika: We had a call from the team who were digging up the grave area. They thought they had found . . . something.

Roger: Another body?

Fredrika: They didn’t say what it was.

SUNDAY

26

The men’s movements were soundless. They were sitting in the boat in silence, gazing at their floats, bobbing on the surface of the water. One rod was made of plastic, the other of sarkanda reed. They had been in the boat for quite some time.

‘I’m really glad you came,’ said Torbjörn Ross.

He had already said it once, but thought it was worth repeating.

‘Sonja and I are very pleased to see you. You’re welcome to join us any time.’

‘Thanks, much appreciated,’ said Alex.

He hadn’t actually realised how much he needed to get out of the city. He had thought that nature and its quietness would stress him out, make him feel restless, desperate to get back home. The effect had been the direct opposite. The cloudless sky and fresh air gave him renewed energy.

But he was embarrassed because he had arrived so late the previous evening. Torbjörn and his wife had assured Alex that there was no harm done, that they had been looking forward to seeing him and were happy to have a late dinner. They had asked if he had been held up because of work, and he had given an evasive answer. Under normal circumstances, he preferred to stick to the truth, but somehow it didn’t seem appropriate in this case.

He hadn’t got home until almost three o’clock on Saturday morning, because he had been sitting in Diana Trolle’s living room watching her drink wine. He had slept until midday, and hadn’t got anything done until the afternoon. Which was why he was late.

‘Do you think he had a place like this?’ Torbjörn asked. ‘The man who killed Rebecca Trolle, I mean.’

Alex looked around. The shining surface of the lake, surrounded by tall trees. The odd summer cottage or chalet where the trees had been felled to allow for building.

‘It’s possible.’

‘The dismemberment itself provides quite a lot of information, in spite of the gruesome nature of the act.’

‘We’ve thought about that. And we’ve questioned suspects for that very reason. But I can’t get away from the fact that she was buried close to another body that had been lying there for almost thirty years. There has to be a connection. Somehow.’

‘You still haven’t identified him?’

Alex jerked his fishing rod, reeled in the line and checked that the bait was firmly attached, which it was.

‘I was hoping he might be a man who went missing in Norrköping just under thirty years ago – Henrik Bondesson. But it wasn’t him. Bondesson had broken a leg when he was a teenager, and our body didn’t have any injuries of that nature.’

‘I recognise the name,’ Torbjörn said. ‘I think I remember the case.’

Alex looked at him in surprise.

‘So will you, if you think about it,’ Torbjörn said. ‘He disappeared just after that bank robbery in Norrköping. He was a divorced father of two who had been fired from a firm of architects. Up to his ears in debt.’

‘You’re absolutely right. I’d forgotten that his name was Henrik Bondesson. He was the main suspect in the bank robbery, wasn’t he?’

‘Exactly. But there wasn’t any proof.’

‘Strange that he’s never turned up. I mean, the statute of limitations for that particular crime is long gone.’

Torbjörn shrugged.

‘People do the strangest things.’

Alex reached for his coffee, took a swig and put down the plastic cup.

‘Top up?’

Sonja had sent them off with coffee and sandwiches. Lena would not have done the same if he had asked her, which he definitely wouldn’t have done. They had opted for a more modern relationship; if they wanted to make a thoughtful gesture, there were other ways.

‘Do you think you’re going to solve this case?’ Torbjörn asked.

Alex almost dropped his fishing rod.

‘Of course I’m going to bloody well solve it.’

‘I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m just saying it’s an incredibly difficult case.’

‘It’s virtually crawling with suspects. We’ll find the person who did it.’

Torbjörn put down his rod and unwrapped a sandwich.

‘You discover some interesting stuff when you start digging into the relationships between different people,’ he said. ‘Other people don’t realise what you stumble on when you’re investigating a murder. Regardless of which social class a person belongs to, there are always friends or acquaintances with a record for violent crime or some other shit. Always.’

‘It’s particularly frustrating when a case involves younger people,’ Alex said. ‘Take Rebecca Trolle, for example. The church choir, the mentoring network, swimming lessons for babies, and her university studies. I just don’t understand how they fit it all in.’

‘That means there’ll be plenty of leads to follow up.’

‘Each more bizarre than the previous one. Diana, her mother, told me Rebecca was almost obsessed with her dissertation about an old children’s author who killed her husband and spent about ten years in prison.’

‘Eleven,’ Torbjörn said. ‘Not nearly long enough, if you ask me. They should have thrown away the key.’

He put down his sandwich. ‘So she was doing her dissertation on Thea Aldrin?’

Alex looked blankly at his colleague.

‘Yes.’

‘When you say she was obsessed, what do you mean?’

‘Her supervisor said the dissertation was almost like a police investigation.’

Alex tried to sound light-hearted, but Torbjörn looked so serious that he decided to drop that particular approach.

‘She thought Thea was innocent?’

‘Something like that.’

Torbjörn shook his head and picked up the sandwich.

‘It was my first murder,’ he said. ‘And believe me, she was guilty.’

He took a bite, chewed and swallowed.

‘I’d been in the force for a few years and was brought in as an additional resource on the investigation side; I was allowed to go out with the big boys on a murder case. Thea Aldrin’s neighbour called the police after hearing terrible screams from Thea’s garage – one male, one female voice. We went straight there, assuming she’d been beaten up. But we were wrong. We knocked on the door, but no one answered. We walked around the house, looked in all the windows. She was sitting in the garage when we broke in; the knife was in her hand and the man lay dead on the floor.’

‘She’d stabbed him to death?’

‘With at least ten blows. Completely crazed. There was blood everywhere. The carotid artery had been severed. She was just sitting there, staring into space; she was obviously in shock. She was covered in his blood.’

‘Why did she kill him?’

‘We never managed to get a sensible explanation. She said it was self-defence, but the violence to which he had been subjected didn’t fit in with that at all. He had left her and her son before the boy was even born. The prosecutor cited that as a motive – the fact that she hadn’t forgiven him for deserting her.’

‘Bloody hell. What happened to the son?’

Torbjörn wiped his hands on his trouser legs.

‘You obviously don’t remember this at all. The papers went mad – they filled page after page.’

‘Hang on,’ Alex said. ‘I do remember. The son had already disappeared, hadn’t he?’

‘The previous year. Thea Aldrin, the famous author, travelled all over the country searching for her lost son. But believe me, Alex, she knew exactly where he was. She did everything that was expected of her, but you could see that she wasn’t particularly worried.’

Alex blinked.

‘You thought she’d murdered him as well?’

‘The others thought it – I knew. Or to put it more accurately, I know. There were plenty of people who said how difficult she had found her son throughout his life. I think she blamed him for the fact that his father had cleared off, and in the end she took her revenge on both of them.’

The boat bobbed in the water as a gentle puff of wind rippled the surface.

‘There was something else about Thea Aldrin that was bloody terrifying, but it never made the papers.’

Alex reluctantly admitted to himself that his curiosity had been aroused by his colleague’s words.

‘The police confiscated a film when they raided a porn club called Ladies’ Night in 1981.’

‘What film?’

‘It was the sickest thing we’d ever seen. It was nothing like any other porn film you can think of. Actually, it wasn’t even a porno. It was pure violence, just insane. It had been recorded using a home video camera, with terrible lighting. It lasted just a few minutes. We played it on an old projector I dug out from the cellar at home.’

‘What was it about?’

‘There was no plot. It showed a young woman being murdered in a room where all the walls appeared to be made of glass, covered with sheets. Then it ended. It was obviously supposed to look like a snuff movie.’

Alex looked sceptically at Torbjörn.

‘A snuff movie?’

‘Yes – you know. A film that claims to show a real murder. There are sick bastards who get off on that kind of thing.’