The Disappeared (4 page)

Should she tell him? Should she explain that her partner had suddenly announced that he wanted to spend some time at home with Saga after all? That things were difficult at work, and he couldn’t face going in?

Suddenly she asked herself if she even
wanted
to come back to work. The days with Saga had been wonderful. Fredrika had been pregnant at the same time as several of her friends, and they had met up almost every week during her maternity leave. They would think she had lost her mind if she rang and told them she had started work so suddenly.

‘I could start off working part time – say seventy-five per cent?’

‘From when?’

She hesitated.

‘Tomorrow . . .?’

Margareta Berlin, head of Human Resources, had a meeting with Fredrika a little while later. She didn’t normally concern herself with routine matters, but when she realised it was to do with the staffing of Alex Recht’s team, she sent for Fredrika.

‘Thank you for coming.’

Fredrika smiled and sat down.

‘I was just on my way home, so I hope this won’t take too long . . .’

‘No, of course not.’

Margareta gathered up some papers and placed them in the filing cabinet behind her. She was tall and strong, or rather powerfully built. Fredrika didn’t want to describe her as fat, but she gave an impression of sturdiness.

‘How are you?’ she asked.

The question gave Fredrika a bad feeling.

‘Fine. Thank you.’

Margareta nodded.

‘You look well. I just wanted confirmation, really. How’s Alex?’

‘You’ll have to ask Alex about that.’

‘But I’m asking you.’

There was a brief silence as Fredrika considered the question.

‘I think he seems OK. Better, anyway.’

‘I think so too. But I have to admit that things weren’t too good for a while.’

She leaned across the desk.

‘I’ve known Alex for over twenty years, and I want nothing but the best for him.’

She paused.

‘But if he’s guilty of misconduct, if he turns out not to be up to the job, then I will have to act.’

‘Who says he’s not up to the job?’ Fredrika asked, sounding more confused than she would have wished.

‘Nobody, so far. But I’ve been told on the quiet that he’s been unnecessarily hard on certain colleagues. You could say he’s been doing my job.’

She laughed softly.

Fredrika wasn’t laughing. She had the greatest respect for Margareta Berlin, not least because she had finally put a stop to Peder Rydh’s nonsense. But Fredrika’s loyalty lay with Alex, not with the head of HR. She hadn’t expected this to cause any kind of conflict.

‘Anyway,’ Margareta said in conclusion. ‘I just wanted to give you an opening in case you feel you need to talk at some point in the future.’

‘About Alex?’

‘Or anything else.’

The meeting was over, and Fredrika got ready to leave.

‘This new case,’ Margareta said as she stood in the doorway.

‘Yes?’

‘I remember what Alex was like when he led the investigation into Rebecca Trolle’s disappearance.’

Fredrika waited.

‘He was like a man possessed. It was the last case he dealt with before he was given the chance to form his own team, the one you and Peder belong to. He took the fact that we didn’t find her very badly.’

‘And you’re afraid things will be too much for him now she’s finally turned up?’

‘Something like that.’

Fredrika hesitated, her hand resting on the door handle.

‘I’ll keep an eye on him,’ she said.

WEDNESDAY

4

It was a fantastic spring, Malena Bremberg thought, as she dealt with the flowers that one of the residents in the care home had received from her son. All those hours of sunshine after a long winter.

She returned to the old lady’s room with a vase.

‘Aren’t they lovely?’ she said.

The old lady leaned forward to inspect the flowers.

‘I don’t like the yellow ones,’ she said firmly.

Malena found it difficult to suppress her laughter at the emphasis on the word
don’t
.

‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. What would you like me to do with them?’

‘Chuck the lot.’

‘Oh, no, they’re so pretty! And from such an elegant young man.’

‘Stuff and nonsense, he’s only after my money. Take the flowers away – give them to Egon. He never has any visitors.’

The glass vase was cool against her palms as Malena carried it into the kitchen.

‘Doesn’t she want them today either?’ asked her colleague, who was busy emptying the dishwasher.

They both laughed.

‘She told me to chuck the lot.’

Malena’s colleague shook her head.

‘I don’t know why he keeps on turning up week after week, when she’s so unpleasant.’

‘She says it’s because of his inheritance.’

‘And I say it’s love.’

Malena put down the vase on one of the tables.

‘Do you think she’ll recognise the flowers by dinnertime?’ she asked.

‘No chance. Her memory seems to be getting worse and worse. It’s almost time to see if they’ve got room for her upstairs.’

Upstairs. The abstract paraphrase for the secure unit on the upper floor where those suffering from dementia were cared for. Many residents seemed to end up there sooner or later. The heavy doors of the unit frightened Malena. She hoped to God that she would never be affected by some form of dementia.

The television was on in the kitchen. Malena’s attention was caught by a news item about a woman’s body that had been found in an area of forest in Midsommarkransen. The police hadn’t released many details, but the man who had found the body was happy to be interviewed.

‘It was the dog that found her,’ he said, standing up very straight. ‘Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to tell you any more than that.’

‘But what did she look like?’ the reporter asked.

The man looked confused.

‘I’m not allowed to say.’

‘Can’t you tell us if she was wearing any clothes?’

The man’s earlier self-confidence had completely disappeared.

‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘Come along, Svante.’

He walked away from the cameras, dragging the dog behind him.

Malena’s mobile rang in the pocket of her overalls. The ugly uniform with which the care home provided its employees had just one advantage: the big pockets where you could keep a mobile phone, throat lozenges and other unnecessary items.

She stiffened when she saw who was calling. So long ago, and yet the memory hadn’t faded at all. He just kept on ringing, making his demands. Threatening and saying those foul things.

‘Hello.’

‘Hi, Malena. How are you?’

She left the kitchen and moved down the corridor, hoping her colleague wouldn’t overhear the conversation.

‘What do you want?’

‘The same as before.’

‘We had an agreement.’

‘Yes, and we still do. I can only apologise if you thought otherwise.’

She was breathing heavily; she could feel the panic rising like the bubbles in a bottle of cola.

‘Nobody has been here.’

‘Nobody?’

‘Not a soul.’

‘Good. I’ll be in touch when I need more information.’

She remained standing in the corridor for a long time after the conversation was over. She would never be free. Certain debts could never be paid off, it was that simple.

5

‘Aren’t we meeting in the Lions’ Den?’

Peder stopped dead when he heard Fredrika’s question.

‘We can’t use it at the moment; the air conditioning system broke down and the whole corridor smelled of shit. We’re borrowing the others’ room for the time being.’

The others, Fredrika thought. An interesting way of describing the colleagues who were on the same corridor, but who didn’t belong to Alex’s team.

Peder glanced at her.

‘You came back a bit bloody fast,’ he said. ‘Overnight, in fact.’

When Fredrika didn’t reply immediately he added hurriedly:

‘It’s good to have you here, of course.’

‘Thank you,’ said Fredrika. ‘Things changed at home, so I ended up coming back to work a bit sooner than I’d intended.’

Peder still looked surprised, but Fredrika couldn’t help him. She was confused herself. The step from beginning to miss her job and thinking it might be nice to go back part time to actually starting work had been rather shorter than she had expected. Astonishingly short, in fact. And she wasn’t really back, not properly. She would be working part time for the next three weeks, and then . . . She would just have to wait and see what felt right.

Alex was waiting for them in the conference room, which looked almost exactly the same as the Den. The memory of her conversation with Margareta Berlin was bothering Fredrika. She had promised to report back if Alex’s leadership seemed unsatisfactory, out of the ordinary in some way. Few things were worse than volunteering to be a spy for the head of HR. But it wasn’t entirely voluntary.

It’s because I care about you, Alex.

Fredrika had heard about his trip to Iraq, and wept when she was told why he had gone. There were no words to describe how she felt when she thought about the kindness of what Alex had done, travelling halfway around the world to return an engagement ring to a woman who had lost the man she loved without knowing how or why.

I nearly lost you, Spencer.

They sat down around the table: Fredrika, Alex, Peder, and a number of faces Fredrika didn’t recognise. These were additional colleagues on loan to the team because of the dismembered body in the plastic bags.

Rebecca Trolle. Initial tests using DNA from a body in an advanced state of decay had proven her identity. The process had been speeded up because of the unusual circumstances, given priority at SKL, the National Forensics Laboratory in Linköping, and everywhere else as necessary.

Alex, who had never been in any doubt about the identity of the corpse, was keen to get started.

‘We heard from SKL less than an hour ago, and we won’t be releasing any information to the media until Rebecca’s mother has been informed.’

‘Are we telling her that her daughter’s dead?’ Peder asked.

Is that the right term when you’re informing someone that a person who has been missing for two years has been found dead? Fredrika wondered. She decided it probably was. Even if death was the only logical assumption, there was no reason to give up hope. Not if you really loved the person who was missing, not if you needed that hope. If Saga disappeared, how many years would it be before Fredrika gave up? A hundred? A thousand?

‘We will be informing her that her daughter has been found dead,’ Alex said. ‘I’m going to do it myself when the meeting is over. Fredrika can come with me.’

‘But there’s something I wanted to ask her,’ Peder objected. ‘The mother, I mean.’

‘There will be plenty of opportunities to speak to her, Peder. I’ve kept in touch with her since Rebecca disappeared, and I think this news will bring her peace of mind. She already suspects that her daughter is dead, but she wants that confirmation. And of course she’ll want to know what happened.’

Alex took a deep breath.

‘It’s difficult to establish the exact cause of death because the body has been lying there for such a long time. There is nothing to indicate bullet wounds or other physical trauma – broken ribs as a result of a struggle, for example. She might have been strangled, but we can’t be sure.’

He opened a folder and took out a number of photographs.

‘However, the pathologist was able to establish that she was pregnant at the time of her death.’

Fredrika looked up in surprise.

‘Did we know that?’

‘No, it didn’t come to light in any of the interviews during the course of the original investigation. And we spoke to every single person Rebecca knew. We went through everyone she’d been in touch with on the telephone, we checked out every friend listed as a contact in her email address book, but nobody mentioned the fact that she was pregnant.’

‘So no one knew?’ Fredrika said.

‘It looks that way,’ Alex replied. ‘In which case we have to ask why. Why doesn’t a young girl tell anyone she’s four months pregnant?’

‘Four months,’ Peder echoed. ‘Wouldn’t it have shown?’

‘If it had, somebody would have told us,’ Alex said.

‘She must have confided in someone,’ Fredrika insisted.

‘The father, perhaps?’ said Peder. ‘Who wasn’t very pleased to hear the news, and killed her?’

‘Then chopped up the body,’ said Alex.

He pointed to the photographs.

‘There are two main reasons why a perpetrator dismembers the body of his victim. One: to make identification more difficult. Two: because he’s a sick bastard who enjoys sadistic activities. But in that case he would probably bury the whole lot in one place.’

‘Perhaps both reasons apply,’ Fredrika suggested.

Alex looked at her.

‘Maybe. In which case we’re in real trouble. Because Rebecca might not be the only victim.’

‘But if we bring the pregnancy into our hypothesis, that makes it personal,’ Peder said.

‘Absolutely, which is why we’re going to start from there,’ Alex said. ‘Who was the child’s father, and why did nobody know she was pregnant?’

‘What happened in the original investigation?’ Fredrika asked. ‘Did you manage to narrow down a list of suspects?’

‘There was talk of a new boyfriend, and we threw everything into looking for him, but we never found him. It was a peculiar story from start to finish. We couldn’t find any trace of him – not in phone calls or in her emails. Nobody knew his name, but several people claimed they had “heard about him”. He hovered over the entire investigation like an evil spirit, but we never saw him. We didn’t find any other credible suspects.’

Peder frowned.

‘There was also an ex-girlfriend.’

‘Daniella.’

‘Exactly, so how come Rebecca suddenly had a boyfriend?’

Alex looked weary.

‘How the hell should I know? Her mother described her as a seeker. She’d had several boyfriends, but only one girlfriend.’