The Disappeared (45 page)

Fredrika grabbed her notepad and pen.

‘He’s got a lot of explaining to do.’

‘He has,’ Alex agreed. ‘But he’ll have to wait, because first you’re going to speak to someone called Malena Bremberg.’

‘Malena Bremberg?’

Fredrika was surprised; she tried to place the woman’s name. Wasn’t she the care assistant who had been so shy when they met her at the care home?

Peder walked past the door on his way down the corridor, then turned and came back.

‘I’m going out to look for Jimmy again.’

To look for the brother who had been missing for almost twenty-four hours. The brother who had vanished without a trace; it seemed as if he had disappeared without a single person having seen a thing.

Except for Thea Aldrin, who refused to speak.

The feeling of unease that had haunted Fredrika during the meeting came flooding back. It was something Alex had said. A thought that had passed through her mind so quickly that she hadn’t managed to grab hold of it.

Alex’s phone rang, and he answered. Peder raised a hand in farewell and set off down the corridor.

‘That was one of the lads out at the grave site in Midsommarkransen,’ Alex said. ‘They’re packing it in now. The hole has been filled in, and they’ll be removing the police tape shortly.’

There.

The same thought once more.

An icy hand clamped itself around Fredrika’s heart.

‘You said someone had been there during the night and started filling in the crater,’ she said.

‘Some bloody idiot, no doubt,’ he said. ‘Short of something to do.’

‘We need to open up the grave,’ Fredrika said.

Alex looked at her as if she had lost her mind.

‘Jimmy,’ she whispered. ‘I think they buried him there last night.’

60

In the dream, Jimmy was flying higher and higher on the swing. His whole face was beaming as he shouted to Peder:

‘Can you see me? Can you see how high I’m going?’

Then he was falling.

Or flying through the air.

Peder usually woke up the second before Jimmy hit the ground. It was as if his mind was protecting him from the painful, inevitable outcome. Peder had seen his brother’s skull and his life smashed to pieces against a stone once, and that was enough.

His mother rang while he was in the car on his way back to the assisted living complex.

‘You need to go home and get some rest.’

Her voice was fractured with anxiety.

I’ve already lost one son, don’t make me go through that same hell all over again.

‘I’m OK, Mum.’

‘We’re worried about you, Peder. Can’t you come home and have something to eat?’

We. That must mean his parents and Ylva. Eat? Peder couldn’t remember when he last ate. Was it the previous evening, when he and Ylva were sitting on the balcony? It felt like such a long time ago.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To Jimmy’s. To Mångården, I mean.’

‘Call me soon. Promise?’

‘I promise.’

He pulled into the car park a while later. He slammed the car door and marched straight into the complex, where the residents were in the middle of a meal. One of the girls who worked there got to her feet as Peder walked in.

‘I can find my own way,’ he said, and headed for Jimmy’s room.

He closed the door behind him and stood there in the middle of the floor, searching for something out of the ordinary, some indication of where Jimmy might have gone. But nothing was missing, nothing was damaged. Nothing.

He can’t just have walked out into the night and disappeared.

‘Peder.’

The care worker’s voice made him jump.

‘Yes?’

He turned around and saw her standing in the doorway with one of Jimmy’s friends. Had they knocked before opening the door? He couldn’t be sure.

‘Michael has something he wants to tell you.’

Michael. A young man Peder had met on countless occasions. He was well-built, with dark hair. He suffered from some indefinable impairment that meant he was trapped in eternal childhood, like Jimmy. He loved Jimmy, and thought that Peder was the coolest guy in the whole of Sweden, because he was a cop.

‘What is it, Micke?’

‘I’m not really allowed to say.’

Peder forced a smile.

‘Of course you are. I’m a cop, aren’t I? I can keep a secret.’

‘Jimmy said he saw a man standing out there spying.’

He pointed towards Thea Aldrin’s room on the other side of the lawn.

‘Was it a secret?’

Michael nodded importantly.

‘Yes. That’s what he said. He said it was a secret. That’s why I thought I’d better not mention the other thing until now.’

‘What other thing?’

‘I saw Jimmy leave his room yesterday. I was looking out of my window, and I saw him go over to that lady’s room and stand outside. He looked in through her window.’

Michael swallowed. Peder was fighting to maintain his composure.

‘Then what happened?’

Michael hesitated, but decided to keep going.

‘A man came out of the lady’s room. Through the door. Onto the patio. He spoke to Jimmy, but only for a second. Then they went off.’

Peder’s heart skipped a beat.

‘Where, Micke? Where did they go?’

‘I don’t know. They went to the car park and drove off in a car. They didn’t come back. I waited all night. I kept thinking he’d be really cold; he didn’t have any shoes on.’

There were secrets that were just too big to keep. Secrets that couldn’t be accommodated inside a normal body, a normal heart; they demanded more and more space as time went by.

Malena Bremberg looked as if she was carrying just such a secret. Her face was pale and weary as Fredrika greeted her. She refused coffee, but said she would like a cup of tea.

‘What was it you wanted to tell me?’

There wasn’t much time. For anything. For nothing.

Alex had sent the digger back to Midsommarkransen to open up the grave so that the dogs would be able to pick up the scent of a body.

‘Let’s pray that you’re wrong,’ he had said to Fredrika.

She felt so powerless that she wanted to scream.

And Valter Lund, or Johan Aldrin, was waiting in another interview room.

Malena Bremberg sipped her tea as she struggled to find the right words.

‘I’m not sure what all this is about,’ she said eventually. ‘But I think I know something you ought to know too. Something about Rebecca Trolle.’

She took a deep breath and drank some more tea. Fredrika waited. Waited and listened.

‘Two years ago I had a brief relationship with an older man I met in a bar. Morgan Axberger.’

Fredrika was astonished.

‘But you’re so much younger than him!’

Malena blushed.

‘That was the point. The fact that he was forty years older than me. I know he looks boring, but he can be incredibly charming.’

Fredrika had no comment to make on that point; she had never met Morgan Axberger.

‘What did he want from you?’ she asked.

Malena’s face lost all trace of colour.

‘He wanted to know whether Thea Aldrin ever had visitors. At first I thought he was interested in me because . . . I thought he wanted a relationship with me. But that wasn’t what he wanted at all. He wanted a spy inside Mångården.’

‘He was just using you.’

‘When I realised what he was doing, I tried to break off our relationship. I refused to co-operate. But everything went wrong.’

It was too much for Malena. Huge tears rolled down her cheeks.

‘Which of Thea’s visitors was he interested in?’ Fredrika asked.

‘All of them. But she didn’t have many. There was a police officer, Torbjörn Ross, who’d been coming for years, plus the odd journalist now and again. Then suddenly Rebecca Trolle turned up. She said she wanted to speak to Thea because she was writing a dissertation about her.’

Malena blew her nose.

‘Did you tell Morgan Axberger that Rebecca had been there?’

‘Yes. I happened to be on duty that day.’

Fredrika swallowed hard. Morgan Axberger appeared to have good reason to stay away from the police. In addition, he was old enough to have murdered all the victims found in Midsommarkransen.

‘You said things went badly when you tried to break off your arrangement with Axberger?’ Fredrika said.

Malena’s tone was resigned.

‘He picked me up one morning when I was on my way to a lecture. By that time, I had realised he was dangerous, and I’d kept out of his way. But it was no good. He kept me prisoner for twenty-four hours.’

‘What did he do?’

Fresh tears. Then a whisper.

‘He showed me a film.’

Fredrika felt uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking, but she had to know.

‘What kind of film?’

‘A film from hell. One of those silent films that only lasts a few minutes.’

Fredrika held her breath.

‘At first I didn’t understand what I was watching. The film had been shot in a room where all the walls were covered with sheets. A young girl came in, then a man wearing a mask . . .’

Fredrika knew. Alex had told her about the film; she had decided against watching it herself.

Malena was sobbing.

‘He attacked her with an axe. Then a knife. I thought it was a sick joke. Until it was all over. Then the man bent over the girl, who was lying on the floor, and looked into the camera, at the person who was holding it. He was laughing when he took off the mask; it was just horrible. It was a really old film, but I could see the man’s face clearly. He was evil personified.’

Fredrika’s mouth went dry.

‘Hang on, are you telling me that after the girl was dead, the man who’d killed her took off his mask?’

Time stood still in the interview room.

Malena nodded.

‘I have no idea who he was. He grinned at the man who was holding the camera; he seemed really pleased with himself. When the film ended Morgan went out into the hallway, and when he came back he had an axe in his hand. I don’t think I’ve ever screamed so loudly in my entire life.’

She shuddered, her face chalk-white.

‘I ran, and he hunted me down like an animal. I tried to get out onto the balcony, but he was faster than me. He forced me down and swung the axe. It hit the floor several times, just a few centimetres from my head. I was convinced he was going to kill me. When he raised the axe for the last time, he suddenly stopped and leaned over me. Asked me whether I wanted to live or die. If I wanted to live, I had to keep my mouth shut and carry on working at the care home for as long as Thea Aldrin was alive. If I ever defied him again, he would come back. With the axe.’

Malena ran her hands through her tousled hair, and Fredrika thought that there must have been several copies of the snuff movie, including one that had been shortened in order to avoid revealing the identity of the perpetrator, and that could be shown to other people. Perhaps even sold.

‘You didn’t feel you could go to the police?’ Fredrika said.

‘Not under any circumstances. He made it very clear that the police would never be able to touch someone like him. Nobody would believe me if I said that Morgan Axberger had been in my apartment with an axe, threatening to kill me.’

True. Regrettable, but true.

Fredrika sensed that Malena had more to tell her.

‘He was filming me,’ Malena whispered.

‘Sorry?’

‘He showed me afterwards. He filmed me while I was watching the film, and when I tried to run away. How sick is that?’

Fredrika thought for a moment, giving Malena time to recover.

‘You’re going to have to testify against him, Malena.’

‘I know.’

‘One more thing.’ Fredrika glanced at her notes. ‘You said the killer smiled at the man behind the camera. Did you see him? The man who was holding the camera, I mean?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘But you’re sure it was a man?’

Malena nodded, and when she whispered her answer, Fredrika went cold.

‘Morgan told me. When he raised the axe for the last time, he leaned forward and said: “Now do you realise that I was the one holding the camera?”’

61

Peder Rydh left Jimmy’s room the same way as he assumed his brother had left: through the patio door. Leaving the care worker and Micke behind, he strode across the lawn to Thea Aldrin’s room. Thea didn’t have time to realise that he was coming to see her, otherwise she would probably have tried to lock him out.

She gave a start as he stepped inside.

‘You shouldn’t sit here with the door wide open, Thea.’

His voice sounded completely different from the one he normally used.

Thea was staring at him; she lowered the book she had been reading.

‘There are a few things you forgot to mention to me and my colleagues. If you can’t speak like a normal person, then you’re going to have to write. Because I’m not leaving here until you tell me what happened to my brother Jimmy. The boy who lived across the way; he came over to your window yesterday.’

When Thea still didn’t speak, Peder felt a spurt of white-hot rage. He grabbed the old woman by the shoulders and hauled her to her feet.

‘You. Will. Tell. Me.’

Thea made a feeble attempt to free herself, but she knew it was futile.

‘
Tell me.
’

Her silence decided the matter. He looked at her for a long time, then whispered:

‘We know who sends you flowers.’

The words had an immediate effect. Thea shook her head and tried once more to pull away.

But Peder held on tight.

‘Oh, yes, we know. We know that Valter Lund is your missing son, Johan. The only thing we don’t know, you old bitch, is what the fucker thinks he has to thank you for. Every bloody Saturday.’

She didn’t cry. But she kept on shaking her head, and then she spoke.

She spoke.

Peder was so surprised that he let go of her.

‘Please. Please.’

Her voice was hoarse and rough. Clearly underused, but still functioning.

‘You can talk.’

He cursed his words; they sounded childish, and robbed him of his authority.