The Chosen (9 page)

Soon she would be there. Get to grips with the case of the missing boys.

She offered up a silent prayer that it wouldn’t be too late by the time they found them.

It was as if Stockholm had become a different city overnight. Someone had shot a teacher, standing on the pavement surrounded by children. And the two boys who had disappeared on their way
to a tennis lesson were still missing.

‘I can’t lead both investigations,’ Alex Recht said to his boss first thing in the morning.

‘I’ve asked for the murder to be handed over to the National Crime Unit. I’d like you to focus on the boys.’

Alex was frustrated.

‘But I’ve already made a start on the murder!’

‘Yes, but we didn’t know these boys were going to disappear. I’ve spoken to a colleague in the NCU; they’re very familiar with Josephine’s boyfriend, and would
like to take over the case as part of their own work in mapping serious organised crime.’

But what if Josephine had been shot for some other reason? What if her death had nothing to do with her boyfriend?

In that case they would have to pick it up later. They had the capacity to run only one of the two investigations. Alex’s team was still incomplete.

‘We can’t have a team that consists of just two people,’ he had said when it had first been suggested that he should lead a special investigative unit once more.

‘Absolutely not. You’ll have a core team of three, as before. Recruitment will be down to you. If you need additional resources, all you have to do is ask and I’ll allocate
colleagues on a temporary basis to assist with any ongoing preliminary investigations.’

But recruitment took time, and at the moment the team consisted of Alex and Fredrika. They had put together an advertisement for the third member, and had started to go through the applications
as they came trickling in, but so far none of them had been particularly impressive.

Fredrika sailed into the office, her cheeks rosy after walking to work in the cold; her eyes were brighter than they had been the previous day. Playing the violin was clearly doing her good.

‘Forget the teacher,’ Alex said. ‘We’re working on the boys.’

Fredrika leaned against the wall.

‘Missing kids,’ she said. ‘The perfect first case for our little team, wouldn’t you say?’

She pulled a face.

‘You’re thinking about the little girl who disappeared from the train?’ Alex said. ‘Lilian Sebastiansson?’

As if we could ever forget her.

‘Aren’t you?’

‘Only because it was the first serious case we investigated; otherwise I can’t see any similarities.’

Fredrika shrugged. ‘Maybe not, but children are children, after all.’

Alex knew she was right. He really didn’t like this business of the two missing Jewish boys. The media had gone crazy overnight, wanting more information, more details, but Alex refused to
feed them at such an early stage.

‘Is it just you and me?’ Fredrika asked.

‘We can request any additional resources we need, but we’ll be leading the case.’

That wasn’t strictly true. Alex was the boss, not Fredrika, but as there were only two of them that seemed like an unnecessary distinction.

The media had been given pictures of the boys as evening turned into night and the snowstorm reached its peak. Public reaction was instant. Everyone thought they could help. Every single person
who had been in inner city Stockholm and seen a child with a rucksack and a woolly hat trudging along unaccompanied by an adult decided it was their duty to get in touch with the police.

‘Have we had any calls that might be useful?’ Fredrika asked.

‘Not yet.’

‘So where do we start?’

‘We’ll go over to the Solomon Community; you interview one set of parents and I’ll take the other. If they’re there, of course. Yesterday the fathers were out
searching.’

As he got up and reached for his coat, there was a loud knock on the door and an assistant came in.

‘An elderly lady called and said she’s sure she saw one of the boys at a bus stop on Karlavägen yesterday afternoon.’

‘And what makes her any more reliable than all the rest of the people who’ve called and said more or less the same thing?’ Alex wanted to know as he pulled on his coat.

‘Because it’s the stop from which the boys always catch the bus to the tennis centre, according to their parents. And because she says the boy had the kind of bag that’s used
to carry a tennis racquet.’

H
is first day at work was actually his second.

Peder Rydh slithered along on the fresh snow that hadn’t yet been cleared from the pavements. His sons had cheered when he dropped them off at
day care and they saw the thick white blanket of virgin snow waiting for them in the playground.

‘We’ll be able to get the toboggans out!’ one of the boys had roared with delight.

There were days when Peder wished he was five years old, wanting nothing more from life than good weather and time to play freely. His brother Jimmy’s life had been a bit like that; he had
remained a child after falling from a swing and injuring his head.

On that occasion they had been playing a bit too freely.

Peder walked faster. It was never a good idea to start the day by thinking about Jimmy. The memory still hurt; the sense of loss was still immense.

But I avenged your death, little brother. And it was worth the cost.

The smell of coffee greeted him as he arrived at the Solomon Community. The air felt thin, as if too many people were all trying to breathe it in at the same time. The noise level was
muted; some people had been there all night, ringing around to ask about the boys.

No one had seen anything.

No one had heard anything.

The general secretary took Peder to one side and went over everything that had happened since Peder went home at just after two o’clock in the morning to grab a few hours’ sleep. The
general secretary hadn’t slept at all, which made Peder feel a little unsure of himself. Should he have stayed all night too, then worked all day as well?

‘Still no sign of them,’ his boss said. ‘The police have no information either. The parents have kept their phones switched on, of course, but no one has contacted them to
demand a ransom or anything like that. So it doesn’t seem to be a kidnapping.’

‘I think perhaps it’s a little early to draw that kind of conclusion,’ Peder said. ‘There are different kinds of kidnapping.’

The general secretary went on as if Peder hadn’t spoken:

‘The parents aren’t rich; they wouldn’t be able to pay a large ransom. My guess is that some lunatic has taken them, and that it’s exceptionally important that they are
found as quickly as possible.’

The police officer in Peder, the one who had been sacked in disgrace, suddenly came to life.

First of all, people were sometimes kidnapped in spite of the fact that their relatives weren’t rich.

Secondly, the possibility that the boys had disappeared voluntarily couldn’t be ruled out.

And thirdly, it didn’t matter whether they had gone off on their own or been abducted by someone else – finding them was still a matter of urgency.

‘What about their phones?’ he said. ‘I’m assuming both boys have their mobiles with them – do they ring when you call the numbers?’

‘They seem to be switched off.’

‘We’ll check with the police, see if they’ve managed to pinpoint their position. There’s no guarantee that the boys and the phones will be in the same place, but at
least it would be a start.’

A shadow passed across the general secretary’s face.

‘If the person who’s taken them is thinking far enough ahead to realise he can be tracked using their phones, and has dumped them . . .’ he began.

‘Then he’s a man with a plan,’ Peder finished the sentence for him.

Silently he added: And in that case we’re in trouble, because even the weather is on his side.

The boys would have had no chance of surviving the night if they had managed to get away from their abductor. They would have frozen to death within an hour.

The police officer inside Peder refused to go away.

Two children and a pre-school teacher.

All members of the Solomon Community.

All with a clear link to the Solomon school.

It was obvious that this couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.

The only question was what was going to happen next?

O
ne of the boys had definitely been seen at the bus stop on Karlavägen. The elderly lady confirmed this when Fredrika Bergman showed her some pictures of the children.

‘He’s the one I saw,’ she said, pointing to the photograph of the one called Simon. ‘I spoke to him.’

‘What about?’

‘I asked him what time it was, and he answered very politely.’

Fredrika looked at the photographs provided by the parents. Both boys looked so serious; Simon in particular wore a melancholy expression that affected his whole appearance. The other boy,
Abraham, looked more insolent. Cocky. The kind of kid who might get hold of a boy like Simon and shove his head down the toilet, just because it was fun.

Fredrika stopped her train of thought. It was wrong to think badly of children. They deserved more protection than adults in that respect; they weren’t yet fully formed individuals.
It wasn’t right for Fredrika to come up with aspects of Abraham’s character when she didn’t even know him.

‘Have you remembered anything else?’ she said to the woman, keen to bring the conversation to an end as quickly as possible so that she and Alex could get over to Östermalm.

‘I have, actually. He looked so angry.’

‘Angry?’

‘Yes, really upset. Almost as if he was standing there getting quite worked up about something. And I was surprised when he didn’t get on the bus.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he was obviously waiting for it. Lots of different routes use that stop, but I saw his face change when we spotted the bus. And then he didn’t move a muscle. It was as if he
was standing there debating with himself, deciding whether to get on or not.’

Fredrika could clearly see the boy at the bus stop in the snow. It had been just after four o’clock, and the tennis lesson was due to begin at four thirty. Even if he’d already
changed, which his parents said was usually the case, he didn’t have much time. She presumed he hadn’t caught the bus because Abraham wasn’t there – but why was Abraham late? He
was due at the tennis centre at four thirty as well.

Fredrika thanked the woman for taking the time to come in, and showed her how to find her way out.

The last sighting of Simon was at the bus stop, which meant that at least they had a geographical location to start from.

‘We need to go over what we know,’ she said to Alex a little while later when they were in the car on the way to Östermalm.

‘Haven’t we already done that?’

‘No. We’ve had too much to think about – first the fatal shooting, then the missing boys. I’m not saying that everyone isn’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing
– they are. But we haven’t yet sat down and worked out a clear picture. For example, do we have the slightest idea where the boys went missing?’

‘On their way to their tennis lesson,’ Alex said. ‘Both of them were in school, then they went off to do some homework with different friends. They always met at the bus
stop at four o’clock.’

‘Exactly. But we don’t think they got on the bus?’

‘We’ve spoken to the bus company and all the drivers who might have picked them up, but no one remembers seeing them.’

‘So where does that take us? Do we think that they decided to go and do something else, for some unknown reason? Or that they started walking instead of catching the bus? The woman who saw
Simon at the stop said she thought he looked as if he wanted to get on the bus when it arrived, but then stayed where he was.’

Alex pulled up at a pedestrian crossing and waited for a man pushing a buggy to cross.

‘In that case I suppose we can assume he was waiting for Abraham,’ he said. ‘And when he turned up . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘No idea. The trail ends at the bus stop. That’s where they were last seen.’

‘Wrong,’ Fredrika said. ‘That’s where Simon was last seen. It would be very useful if we could say the same about Abraham. Where are we up to with the analysis of their
telephone traffic? Have we been able to pinpoint their mobiles?’

They had arrived, and Alex was looking for a parking space. The car glided slowly along, the snow crunching beneath its tyres.

‘I checked while you were talking to the woman from the bus stop; both mobiles are switched off. No signal whatsoever. I’ve asked for lists of their calls over the last few
months, and we should have those in an hour or so.’

‘Do we know who each of them called last?’ Fredrika said as she pointed. ‘There’s a space.’

‘Simon’s mother spoke to him after he left school; she said he sounded just the same as usual. He said he wanted meatballs for tea.’

He reversed into the space.

‘If he was talking about tea, then it definitely sounds as if he was intending to go straight home after tennis. What about Abraham?’

‘He spoke to his father before he went to meet Simon. He’d been doing some homework at a friend’s house. But I don’t know if that was the last call he made or
received.’

They left the car and set off towards the Solomon Community. The police cordon outside the school had been removed, and the snow had done a good job of covering the blood. The street looked
perfectly normal.

‘They’re ten years old, Alex. We have to gain access to the family’s computers, see what they’ve been doing on the internet. That’s where children communicate these
days, however sad that might sound.’

‘We’ll sort it out with their parents now. To be honest I’d be more worried about that if we were dealing with young girls.’

‘Because of the risk that they might have arranged to meet someone they’ve got to know online?’ Fredrika said.

‘Yes. Unfortunately we live in an age where it’s more common for girls to be picked up by perverts.’