Without a Trace (30 page)

It was half past ten before the bedroom corridor was quiet at last.

‘I need to let them know about the job tomorrow,’ Jimmy said.

They were sitting on the sofa, curled up together in one corner. Annika’s shoulders were resting against his broad stomach. She felt her chest tighten, and had to make an effort not to become stiff and unresponsive. ‘What are you going to say?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Is this what you want? To be director general?’

‘I think so.’

‘Why?’ she said quietly.

He stroked her hair. ‘It’s nothing to do with the title or the position, or the salary, actually. We’ve spent years on the criminal-justice system in the department, and I know exactly what I’d like to do.’

He fell silent.

‘Murderers aren’t always that nasty,’ Annika said. ‘Sometimes they’re just lonely and sad and angry.’

Jimmy let out a quiet laugh. ‘She’s nice, Nina. How do you know her?’

Annika gazed out at the almost dark room. ‘Just through work,’ she said. ‘I was doing a story, and was in her patrol car on Södermalm one night, way back when, with Julia Lindholm, and then I wrote about David’s murder. Nina found him, so we had quite a bit to do with each other.’ She didn’t say any more. There were some things that not even Jimmy needed to know.

‘What do you think about the job?’ Jimmy asked. ‘Should I take it?’

Annika took a deep breath. She was on the brink of tears. ‘You should do whatever you feel you must,’ she said, forcing herself to sound normal.

He took hold of her shoulders and turned her round so he could see her face. ‘Why are you sad?’

She started to cry. ‘I’m not sad,’ she said.

He pulled her to him, stroking her back and kissing her hair.

The prestigious morning paper was first with the news.

Anders Schyman sat motionless at his desk with the newspaper spread out in front of him, letting the implications reach the pit of his stomach.

The headline ran:

On a professional level, there was only one way of interpreting this: Gustaf Holmerud was fair game once more. Any doubts there might have been about his status as a serial killer were gone now. In a way, the line he and the
Evening Post
had taken had won in the end.

The article was illustrated with a picture of Holmerud smiling, wearing the crayfish-party hat that had become the trademark of Sweden’s Worst Ever Serial Killer. (He wasn’t at all, even if he was telling the truth. The worst was still a teenager from Malmö who had killed twenty-seven old people in the late 1970s by making them drink disinfectant.) Alongside was the official photograph of Viola Söderland from the company report presenting the final year of accounts from her business empire, Golden Spire.

The bulk of the text was an interview with Holmerud’s lawyer, in which he said his client had now also confessed to the murder of the long-missing billionairess, Viola Söderland. The murder was said to have taken place the night she disappeared from her home in Djursholm.

‘This act has tormented my client for almost two decades,’ the lawyer said. ‘He is extremely relieved to be able to tell the truth at last.’

Below the article was some boxed text listing the other women whose murders Holmerud had confessed to: Sandra, Nalina, Eva, Linnea, Lena and Josefin. The prestigious morning paper naturally maintained a neutral position regarding the veracity of the confessions, but they were presented differently from before. The information was treated seriously, with reference made to police sources and detectives, prosecutors and lawyers, in much the same way that Sjölander had in their own coverage.

Then, on the following double-page spread, there was the article that had elevated Holmerud to credible-witness status. The headline wasn’t in a particularly large font, or even especially bold, but it sealed Schyman’s fate.

claimed the headline. A senior judge had reached the relatively simple conclusion that editor-in-chief Anders Schyman and convicted serial killer Gustaf Holmerud could not both be telling the truth, and if Holmerud was right, then Schyman was obviously wrong.

Obviously.

And, these days, Holmerud was a credible source.

Schyman looked at his own photograph. His sense of unreality made the room tilt slightly. The picture was relatively recent. He really had put on weight. Everything was silent around him, except an irritating, high-pitched hum coming from somewhere inside his skull. He looked out through the glass windows at the newsroom. The staff were moving in freeze-frame across the floor, like ants in autumn, talking in small groups, a few glancing in his direction.

The potentially hypocritical journalistic attitude of the prestigious morning paper couldn’t really be criticized. News came in varying degrees of significance. Stories balanced each other out. Holmerud’s tales hadn’t previously been considered interesting enough, and journalistic integrity had weighed more heavily than a spectacular headline, but the consequences of this new confession had tipped the scales in his favour.

The article would also have another effect: the floodgates were wide open now. Once part of the established media had decided he was guilty, there was no way back. Any hope there might have been of the story miraculously disappearing had now been utterly and mercilessly crushed.

He leafed through the rest of the paper but couldn’t be bothered to read anything. Articles about the weather, one about a big cocaine trial under the codename PLAYA that was entering its fifth month, one citing unconfirmed reports that the under-secretary of state at the Ministry of Justice had accepted the post of director general of the Prison and Probation Service, something about disturbances in Thailand with a large number of fatalities.

He let the realization sink in.

All that remained before he reached the edge of the cliff was the bit where he was hounded through the streets.

Just like everyone else who had been ‘unmasked’ and forced to resign.

His departure into the shadows would lead to a brief moment of triumph for his colleagues. Then there would be a new day and fresh headlines, and he would be branded as the editor who had had to go because of some mistake that no one could remember.

Just like Ingemar Lerberg was remembered as the politician who had fiddled his tax.

Unless he chose to take a completely different path. He couldn’t go backwards, this particular story couldn’t be rewound, and his flanks were covered by reporters sharpening their machetes.

There was only one other option: upwards.

He would have to acquire wings. Learn to fly. Take the debate to a completely new level. With wings he would be able to sail across the chasm and not fall to his doom in its depths. The altitude would probably give him vertigo, but at least he wouldn’t be killed by the fall. He might even be able to land, albeit at the risk of breaking an ankle.

Patrik Nilsson was heading towards the glass cubicle, his gait uncertain and uncomfortable. He opened the door without knocking. ‘The staff are unsettled,’ he said nervously. ‘There’s going to be an extraordinary meeting of the union. The representative is calling for your resignation. What do I tell them?’

Schyman studied the young head of news carefully, noting the agitated look in his eyes and the uneasy set of his shoulders. ‘Give me half an hour,’ he said. ‘Then I want a general meeting in the newsroom. It’s to be broadcast live on the website. Talk to our video people and get them to rig up lights and cameras. The quality needs to be good enough for the mainstream broadcasters to show. Are the rest of the media calling?’

‘Constantly. You’re not taking calls, so they’re being put through to me.’

‘Refer them to the live broadcast from now on,’ Schyman said, then picked up his phone to indicate that the conversation was over.

‘What are we doing about tomorrow’s news?’ Nilsson asked, with a note of desperation in his voice. ‘What’s our lead story?’

Schyman put the phone down for a moment as he let the idea dance in his mind. ‘Best-selling headline of the year,’ he said. ‘
Heat-wave on its way
.’

Nilsson’s face cracked into a relieved smile as he shut the door and headed off towards the web-TV department.

Schyman picked up the phone again and made his first call.

The digital files were arranged numerically on Nina’s computer, forty-five of them, all the surveillance recordings from the trains and stations along the Saltsjöbanan line, from its terminus at Solsidan all the way to Slussen in the centre of Stockholm, covering the departures at 09.17, 09.37 and 09.57 on the morning of Monday, 13 May. Lamia had labelled them carefully and clearly: there was no way anyone was going to watch them in the wrong order. That was when the text message alerting the police about the assault on Silvervägen had been sent, from one of Nora’s mobile phones. Someone had been in or close to the station at 09.36 on the morning in question, and Nina had a fairly good idea of who she was looking for.

She double-clicked on the first file, and the platform of Solsidan station filled her screen. According to the digital clock in the top left corner, the film sequence began at 09.15.00. There was a train in the station, its doors open, and people were hurrying to board it. The film consisted of a sequence of separate pictures taken approximately one per second. The quality was grainy black-and-white. The sporadic pictures meant that people moved jerkily, like some ancient silent movie, but Nina didn’t care. She adjusted the settings so that the film played very slowly. That way she could study each photograph for a few seconds, scrutinizing the new passengers as they appeared before they were swallowed by the train. There weren’t many: the morning rush was over. There were no recordings from inside the carriages. Stockholm Local Traffic had camera surveillance in all buses and most Underground trains, but not on the suburban train line out to Saltsjöbaden.

The time on the surveillance footage reached 09.17.00, the doors closed and the train pulled away jerkily. The platform was left deserted in the rain. Presumably the people of Solsidan knew when the next train departed, at 09.37, and the platform remained abandoned for minute after minute.

Nina’s mind started to wander as the film jerked forward, second by second. With nothing happening on the screen, it looked almost like a still photograph of tracks and grey vegetation.

In front of her on the desk was a copy of the drawing she had been given by Kristine Lerberg, Isak’s picture of himself, his brother and sister, and their ‘guardian angel’. The original had been sent to Forensics for comparison with the child’s drawing that had been recovered from the crime scene at Kråkträsken.

Isak was good at drawing: the picture had been made with plenty of enthusiasm and an eye for detail. Nina remembered the picture he had drawn of Kristine: her shoes had been the right type and colour, her indoor shoes, the ones she wore when she got home and had taken off her boots.

Nina pulled the copy closer and studied Isak’s ‘angel’. It was a small figure, fairly broad and squat, with curly black hair, wide dark trousers and a loose top. She was strikingly short, her feet pointed outward slightly, as if she were rather bow-legged, and on her feet she was wearing what could well be a pair of slippers, size 34.

Some youths appeared on the screen in front of her: they seemed to be staring at the same mobile phone. They stopped on the platform, heads close together, for several minutes.

Nina felt her concentration slipping. She had received the autopsy report about Karl Gustaf Ekblad at the morning meeting and reached for it now. He had died from asphyxiation. The injuries to his body were terrible, but not as comprehensive as Ingemar Lerberg’s. There was also a DNA sequence from the skin found under his fingernail. It hadn’t led anywhere as yet, but somehow it pleased her that Kag had struggled and managed to scratch his killer.

At 09.31 a train arrived from Slussen. A few people got off, collars turned up and umbrellas at the ready. The train remained where it was, standing at the station with its doors open. The youngsters got on. The platform was left deserted once more. Then a young mother appeared with a huge pushchair, which caught in the doorway as she was climbing onto the train – she was visibly upset. She was followed by an elderly couple, the man supporting the woman, then two men in thick overcoats carrying briefcases and talking on their mobiles.

At 09.36.30, just before the train was due to depart, a very short figure hurried onto the platform and got into the rear carriage. Nina stopped the film. Was it a child? She clicked back a few frames. There was the figure once more, extremely short, one metre thirty centimetres tall, maybe one forty, dressed in dark clothing. It definitely wasn’t a child – the figure was far too thick-set. Nina could only see her from behind, but she was certain it was a woman. She had curly black hair.

Hello, little angel
.

The doors closed and the train pulled away.

Nina clicked away from the film and opened the next file, the recording from the next station on the line, Erstaviksbadet. Two women walked onto the platform separately, seemed to exchange a few words; presumably they knew each other. The train from Solsidan appeared at 09.38 and the women got on together, but no one got off.

Nina switched film.

The next station, Tattby, one minute later.

The elderly couple got off, the man helping his wife.

Next film.

Tippen, 09.40. A group of five youngsters got on; no one got off.

Igelboda, the final stop of the branch line leading to Solsidan, three minutes later. The train emptied, everyone got off and crossed the platform to catch the train from Saltsjöbaden to Slussen. The dumpy angel with curly dark hair was just visible behind the woman with the pushchair. The train set off a minute later.