Silenced (13 page)

As she drank, the receptionist enquired kindly whether she needed anything else.

‘No,’ she replied, trying to smile. ‘I’d just like my key so I can go up to my room and wash.’

The receptionist disappeared off to the desk and the guard paced impatiently up and down the lobby.

‘The police will be here within half an hour,’ he assured her.

She tried to look grateful, well aware that the police could hardly help her in any significant way.

The receptionist returned. She looked worried.

‘Pardon me, but what room number did you say it was?’

‘214,’ she said wearily.

She gulped some more water, picked herself up and went over to the desk.

‘I’m sorry, miss,’ said the receptionist. ‘In 214 we have a man who booked in the day before yesterday. Are you sure you have the right number?’

Suddenly she could not breathe. She stared at the hotel logo, which was all over the reception area to remind guests where they were.

Manhattan Hotel
. The hotel where she had been staying for the past five nights.

Panic rose inside her. The hotel staff were now observing her with watchful eyes. She tried to keep her voice steady as she spoke.

‘Sorry,’ she said with an effort. ‘I must have got mixed up. You’re right, I don’t remember my room number.’

‘Miss, we want to help you, but your name is not on our computer. Not for any room.’

She swallowed hard.

‘Okay, then perhaps you’ve registered me as having checked out, by mistake.’

The receptionist gave an unhappy sigh.

‘According to the computer, you have not been staying here at all.’

A few seconds passed. She blinked to hold back the tears.

She looked the receptionist entreatingly in the eye.

‘But you must recognise me. I’ve been going in and out of this hotel for several days now.’

The receptionist exchanged glances with the guard, looked as though she wanted to ask something. Then she shook her head.

‘Sorry, miss,’ she said, appearing genuinely sorry. ‘I have never seen you before. And no one else here has, either. Would you like me to help you ring for a taxi?’

STOCKHOLM

Peder Rydh tried to keep his anger in check as Joar and Alex set off for the Ahlbin sisters’ house at Ekerö. Alex had left him the job of going through the emails that had come to light and working with the technical section to try to establish who had sent them. Fredrika had been entrusted with finding out as much as possible about Jakob’s activities with refugee organisations. Even that seemed more exciting than poring over lousy emails.

Peder took out his mobile and tried ringing his brother Jimmy. There was no answer and Peder threw the phone onto his desk. Of course he hadn’t answered, everything else was going down the pan, so why not that, too?

A sense of guilt set in almost immediately. He should be glad Jimmy was not answering his phone, because it meant he was too busy doing something he enjoyed more.

‘Jimmy’s lucky having a big brother who cares about him so much,’ said the carers at the assisted living unit whenever Peder went there.

It sometimes seemed as if the unit was the only place on earth where Peder still made a good impression and felt welcome. Jimmy had lived there since he turned twenty, and seemed happy. It made his world the size he could handle and he was surrounded by people like himself who could not manage on their own.

‘You have to remember that in spite of any setbacks, you’re still living an enormously privileged life,’ his mother would say.

Peder knew what she meant, but it still bothered him to hear her say it. Fredrika Bergman, for example, hadn’t got a sibling who had suffered brain damage at the age of five in a stupid game that went wrong; did that mean she was less duty-bound than Peder to make the most of herself and her life?

Sometimes when he was sitting with one of his little boys on his lap he would think about how incredibly fragile life was. Indelible images from childhood reminded him of the accident with the swing that had destroyed his brother’s life and underlined how easily something could be irrevocably lost if you were not careful.

Careful. Trustworthy. Aware.

God knew when he had last been any of those things.

His mother, who functioned more or less as a nanny to the twins, had started watching him with a worried look when he got home late smelling of beer or went for drinks after work three evenings in a row. Something had happened to him to make him less considerate and more neglectful. It had happened when the boys were born and Ylva was sucked into that goddamn post-natal depression that went on and on.

But now it was as if he was the one who couldn’t get his health back on track, not her. When they first separated he had felt strong and responsible. He had broken out of an impossible situation and done something radical to improve his life.

But it had all gone to hell in a handcart.

As usual he just gritted his teeth. At least at work he had other things to think about.

He went through the checklist he had put together of all the threats sent to Jakob Ahlbin’s church email account in the past two weeks. The tone grew more hostile as time went on, and the threats seemed to have started after the clergyman intervened in some dispute that the sender felt was none of his business. The emails were not signed with a name, but with the initials SP. The initials also featured in the email address used to issue the threats.

Peder frowned. He was not sure what SP stood for.

He read the emails again. The first was dated 20 January.

Dear Reverend Scumbag, we advise you to back off while you still can. SP

Back off from what, wondered Peder.

The next email had come a few days later, 24 January.

We damn well mean it, vicar. Keep away from our people, now and for ever. SP

So SP was some kind of group, Peder could work out that much. But what else? The rest of the threatening emails did not offer any more contextual clues, but Peder saw that the tone had hardened. An email from the last day of January read:

If you don’t give a toss about our friends, we don’t give a toss about yours. We’re going to make it hell for you. An eye for an eye, you fucking priest. SP

Hardly well-written. But the message was clear. Peder wondered what Jakob Ahlbin himself had thought. He had not reported any of the threats as far as Peder could see. Did that mean he had not taken them seriously? Or that he had other reasons for keeping the messages from the police?

The last two emails had arrived in the final week of Jakob’s life. On 20 February, the person had written:

You ought to listen to us, vicar. You’ve got the trials of Job ahead of you if you don’t stop your activities right away
.

And then the last one, on 22 February:

Don’t forget how it all ended for Job; there’s always time to change your mind and do the right thing. Stop looking
.

Peder pondered. Stop looking for what? The name Job sounded familiar, but he could not place it. He was assuming it must be biblical. A quick internet search confirmed it.

Job was apparently the man God tested more than any other to show the Devil how far he could push those who lived righteously.

Job lost everyone, Peder noted grimly. But he himself survived.

He reached for the telephone receiver and rang the technical division to see if they had come up with any names for the sender of the anonymous emails.

It took no more than half an hour to drive out of Stockholm to Ekerö. The roads were clear in the middle of the day, not clogged with rush-hour traffic.

‘What do you think?’ asked Joar non-committally.

‘I don’t think anything,’ Alex said firmly. ‘I prefer to know. And I know too little in this case to be able to say anything. But it’s a cause for concern that Jakob received such serious threats just before he was found dead.’

Alex did not need to spell out why it was a cause for concern. The problem was clear. If it turned out that there was proof Jakob had not been the perpetrator, they were in deep trouble with the investigation. Forensics had been through the flat with a fine-toothed comb without finding a shred of evidence that anyone else had been there at the time of the shootings. In his heart of hearts, Alex hoped Jakob would turn out to have done it. Otherwise things were going to get hellishly complicated.

They parked in the driveway and got out of the car. The sky was cloudless and the snow frozen hard. The best kind of winter weather and not the sort of conditions you spontaneously linked with death and misfortune.

The snow lay pristine in front of the house and all round it.

‘No one’s been here for a while,’ said Joar.

Alex said nothing. For no particular reason, his thoughts went to Peder. Maybe he had been too hard on him; the case had been his from the start. But colleagues in this business had to expect a severe reprimand to result from improper behaviour. It was irrelevant that he was having a rotten time at home; you could not bring private problems to work with you. Especially if you were a police officer.

‘We’ll go in as soon as the technicians get here,’ Alex said out loud, to stop the thoughts chasing round in his head. ‘I think they were just behind us on the road.’

They had been granted a search warrant by the prosecutor because a criminal act was suspected. Finding a key to the house had been harder. Elsie and Sven Ljung may have had a spare key to Jakob and Maria’s flat at Odenplan, but they did not have one to the house, and the daughters obviously could not be asked. In the end they had asked permission to go into the Ahlbins’ and Karolina’s town flats to look for the key, but could not find anything. So the technicians were coming to help them force entry through the front door with minimal damage.

‘What did Karolina’s place look like?’ Alex asked Joar, who had been in on the search.

Joar initially did not seem to know quite how to answer.

‘I certainly wouldn’t say it looked like the home of a drug addict,’ he said finally. ‘We took some pictures; you can see them later.’

‘Did it look as if someone had gone in and cleaned it up afterwards?’ he asked, thinking of Johanna, who might have done something of the kind after her sister’s demise.

‘Hard to tell,’ Joar said honestly. ‘It looked more as though nobody had been there for a while. As if somebody had done a thorough tidy-up and then gone away.’

‘Hmm,’ said Alex thoughtfully.

The snow crunched under the wheels of the technicians’ vehicle as they pulled up alongside the other car. Ten minutes later, they were in the house.

The first thing Alex noted was that the house was warm. The second was that it was furnished in a pleasant, homely fashion not at all like the way Joar and Peder had described Mr and Mrs Ahlbin’s flat. It was clean and neat. The walls were hung with photographs of the family at various ages. There were home-woven runners on the tables and the windows had curtains of a fairly modern style.

They went round in silence, unsure what they were looking for. Alex went out into the kitchen, opened cupboards and drawers. There was a litre of milk in the fridge; the carton was unopened and two weeks beyond its use-by date. That meant it could not be all that long since someone had been there.

The house had two storeys. The two bedrooms upstairs each had a set of bunk beds in them. The landing between them was used as a TV room. On the ground floor were a kitchen and dining room, and a largish living room. There were bathrooms on each floor.

‘Two lots of bunk beds,’ Alex remarked. ‘That’s odd, isn’t it? Before the sisters took over the house you would have thought they were here as a family. It seems odd that Mr and Mrs Ahlbin slept in separate beds.’

Joar considered this.

‘Maybe it hasn’t always been like this?’ he said.

Alex heaved a sigh.

‘Well, let’s hope so,’ he said, heading back downstairs.

He wandered round the rooms, studying the photos. Something was disturbing him but he was not sure what. He looked again. Mum, Dad and two daughters sitting in the garden. It must be an old photograph, because the girls were little. More garden pictures, the girls older. Karolina and her parents, and one of Karolina on horseback.

Alex realised what it was that had disconcerted him.

‘Joar, come here,’ he called.

Joar’s feet thudded down the stairs.

‘Look at these pictures,’ said Alex, sweeping a hand over the living-room wall. ‘Look at them and tell me what you think.’

Joar studied the photos in silence, walking up and down in front of them.

‘Were you thinking of anything in particular?’ he asked uncertainly.

‘Johanna,’ Alex said resolutely. ‘Don’t you see? She suddenly disappears from the shots and only Karolina’s left. Looking the picture of health, I might add.’

‘But these photos go back a long time, surely?’ said Joar doubtfully.

‘They do,’ said Alex. ‘But the more recent ones look about five years old at most.’

They did another tour of the house. Karolina was in several of the pictures upstairs, including an enlargement of one with her parents that had pride of place on the TV set. Johanna was conspicuous by her absence.

‘Maybe they didn’t like her,’ said Alex, mostly to himself. ‘Maybe they had a major falling out over something.’

But that theory did not seem to fit, either. Johanna was part-owner of the house, after all. Why was she not in the photographs in her own home?

A technician stuck his head round the open front door.

‘There seems to be a way into a basement round the back,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to open that door, too?’

The lock turned out to be frozen solid and not at all as cooperative as the first one. The technician had to work at it for nearly twenty minutes before the door finally creaked open. Alex looked down and saw a short, steep set of steps leading down to a basement. He was about to ask for a torch when he saw the light switch on the wall, and turned on the light as he went down the steps. A light bulb flickered into life.