The Disappeared (9 page)

He gathered the team in their temporary meeting room. Fredrika was still there.

‘What hours are you actually working? I thought you were supposed to be doing seventy-five per cent?’

He was trying to sound caring rather than annoyed.

‘I’m working approximately seventy-five per cent,’ Fredrika replied. ‘I was actually supposed to be somewhere else after lunch, but it all sorted itself out.’

An evasive tone, indicating that her working arrangements were negotiable. Alex didn’t know what to think. Apparently, the child’s father was about the same age as Alex; he wondered how that was possible. He certainly wouldn’t want to start all over again with a baby. Dirty nappies and sleepless nights, snotty noses and potty training. The thought made him feel a little sad. He hadn’t taken paternity leave, and to be honest he hadn’t actually wiped very many snotty noses. For a long time he had convinced himself that he wasn’t missing anything, that he could make up for it with the children later on.

Few lies in the history of the world have become more prevalent than the idea that you can somehow compensate at a later stage for not spending time with your children when they are little. When Alex was faced with the horrendous task of burying his wife, the mother of his children, it was very clear which parent was closest to those children. His son had come back from South America during the summer and stayed until it was all over. In every gesture he made, every word he said, Alex recognised Lena. He couldn’t see himself anywhere at all.

‘The pathologist is hoping to get back to us with further information tomorrow,’ he said, ‘but we shouldn’t get our hopes up. The second body has been in the ground for a long time, and key evidence is no longer available.’

He got up and began to write on the whiteboard at one end of the room.

‘As far as Rebecca Trolle is concerned, this is what we know. She went missing on her way to a party. She was seen on a bus heading in the opposite direction from the party; we don’t know why she was on the bus. She was expecting a child she didn’t want, and might well have been afraid that the child’s father would want to keep it. At the time of her disappearance she wasn’t in a steady relationship, as far as we are aware, but we do know that she had had sexual intercourse with a friend, Håkan Nilsson, whom she has referred to as a nuisance when speaking to other friends. And Håkan would have loved to be a father.’

Alex fell silent.

‘We also know that after her disappearance there were rumours that she had been selling sex on the Internet, but we seem to have hit a brick wall there,’ Peder said. ‘No one can give us the name of the website where she was allegedly active, and no one can tell us exactly how long she was supposed to have been doing this. Nor can anyone remember when the rumour started, or where it came from.’

‘What happened with Diana Trolle’s friend?’ Alex asked. ‘Did you speak to her and her daughter?’

‘I’m seeing them in an hour.’

‘This sounds like nonsense to me,’ Fredrika said. ‘We have nothing that would explain why Rebecca would do such a thing. Selling your body isn’t exactly something you do because it’s fun – you do it because you have to, or because you’re sick and you don’t know any better.’

‘I agree,’ Alex said. ‘Let’s see where we are after Peder has spoken to Diana’s friend and her daughter.’

He stepped back and looked at his notes.

‘Håkan Nilsson is still the most interesting character. Unless the DNA test shows that someone else was the child’s father; if that’s the case, we need to prioritise the search for the secret boyfriend.’

‘Håkan could still be of interest, even if he isn’t the father,’ Fredrika said. ‘That might even make him more interesting. He was obviously keener on Rebecca than she was on him. He might have found out she was pregnant and confronted her, gone crazy with jealousy.’

‘And killed her,’ Peder chipped in.

Alex looked at him.

‘Not just killed her,’ he said. ‘Dismembered her body as well.’

He left his words hanging in the air.

‘It could have happened,’ Peder said. ‘He’s an odd bugger. Unpleasant.’

‘I’m not saying you’re wrong,’ Alex said. ‘What I’m saying is the fact that her body was desecrated in that way tells us something important about the murderer. He must have had the time and the opportunity to dismember the body, then to transport the sacks to the place where she was buried.’

‘Can we tell whether he knew what he was doing when he cut up the body?’ Fredrika asked.

Alex paused for a moment before replying.

‘I received some information on that point just before the meeting. According to the pathologist, the body was dismembered using a chainsaw, which definitely does not indicate that the murderer knew what he was doing.’

No one said a word. Alex allowed them time to digest what they had just heard.

‘The use of a chainsaw proves that the murderer must have had access to a remote and probably isolated venue which belonged to him. You can’t go into a friend’s garage and start chopping up a body with a chainsaw; it would be too messy and too difficult to clean up.’

‘What does this mean in terms of the killer’s profile?’ Fredrika asked. ‘Using such extreme violence . . . it’s sick. This has to be personal. The murderer seems to have wanted to debase Rebecca, even after her death.’

Alex nodded.

‘Which is why we have to be careful. Under no circumstances must this information be leaked to the media. For one thing, the attention would create problems for us, and for another it would be difficult to question suspects. No one would dare to speak to us.’

He looked worried; he turned to Fredrika.

‘What about Daniella, the ex-girlfriend; can we eliminate her from our inquiries?’

Fredrika considered her response.

‘Not entirely. She reacted oddly when we mentioned the rumours about Rebecca selling sex on the internet. I got the feeling that she was lying, or keeping something from us.’

‘OK, we’ll keep her on the books for now. Do you think she could have been the source of the rumour?’

‘I don’t know. It did cross my mind.’

Fredrika decided to carry on talking while she had the opportunity.

‘That party Rebecca didn’t turn up at, the mentors’ party – what’s that all about?’

‘Rebecca was part of a so-called mentoring programme,’ Alex explained. ‘To put it briefly, the students who were selected for the programme were given a personal mentor, who would provide advice and regular contact. The mentors were a wide range of different people: high flyers in industry, priests, authors, a couple of politicians.’

‘Who was Rebecca’s mentor?’

‘Let me think . . . Valter Lund.’

Fredrika was surprised.

‘Valter Lund? The boss of Axbergers?’

‘Exactly.’

‘But why was he her mentor if she was studying the history of literature? Did they just allocate these mentors in a completely random way?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Alex said. ‘I remember we spoke to him, but we were able to eliminate him more or less straight away.’

Peder spoke up.

‘I went through Rebecca’s diary this morning. It was bloody hard to make out.’

Alex nodded, looking less than happy.

‘Thanks for the reminder, Peder.’

‘What do you mean, hard to make out?’ Fredrika asked.

‘She had her own system for noting things down,’ Alex said. ‘For example, she never wrote the name of the person she’d arranged to see, just the initials. We managed to identify most of them, but we had to give up on some. We made a list of everyone who appeared in her diary in the months leading up to her disappearance.’

‘Two weeks before she went missing she met a “TA”,’ Peder said. ‘Who was that?’

Alex frowned, trying to remember.

‘I think it was something to do with her dissertation. Completely irrelevant.’

‘And who was she seeing on the day she disappeared?’ Fredrika asked.

‘Nobody at all. We mapped out her final days as best we could with the help of the diary, but we didn’t find anything earth-shattering.’

‘Could I have a copy?’

‘You can have mine,’ Peder offered. ‘I don’t need it at the moment.’

Fredrika looked pleased, and started gathering her things together.

Alex felt a sudden pang in his chest. Of course she was going home; she had a family to think of. He thought back to dinner with his daughter the previous evening. He was a grandfather now; earlier than he had expected, perhaps, but it felt good.

But Lena never knew what it was like to be a grandmother.

‘See you tomorrow,’ he said to Fredrika.

The rest of them stayed on for a while, talking over a number of points. The officers who had been brought in to supplement the team had remained silent during the early part of the meeting, but now felt able to air their views and ideas. Alex caught himself not listening. Instead, he was thinking of Diana Trolle, whose daughter’s body had been dismembered using a chainsaw. He would solve this case if it was the last thing he did.

10

The meeting took place in Erland Malm’s office, the room Spencer Lagergren had visited just a few days earlier. Apart from Spencer and Erland, there was a representative from the student body and a member of the university board. Spencer had naively assumed that the meeting would put a stop to his miserable plight, and was looking forward to informing his employer that he had no intention of returning to work at present, but wished to remain on paternity leave. Fredrika had been unable to come home and look after Saga this afternoon as she had promised, so Spencer had brought the child with him to the meeting.

He hated lying to Fredrika. To be fair, he wasn’t exactly lying, but he was deliberately withholding information which he really should have passed on to her. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her what had happened, besides which he assumed the matter would soon be resolved.

He immediately realised that he had made a series of errors. Bringing Saga with him didn’t look good; she lay there asleep in her buggy, the very personification of his sinful life. Nor did the meeting appear to have the aim of putting an end to a regrettable misunderstanding. Spencer very quickly became aware that in fact the opposite was true.

‘Spencer, we have conducted a significant number of lengthy interviews on the situation with which we are faced,’ Erland Malm began. ‘And believe me, it hasn’t been an easy exercise.’

He paused and looked at Spencer as if to check that he was really listening. Which he was.

‘Tova’s accusations are so serious that we feel we have no alternative but to take the matter further, so that any uncertainty can be removed once and for all.’

Erland appealed silently to his colleagues, hoping that someone else would feel able to carry on. No one spoke.

‘What uncertainty?’ said Spencer.

‘I’m sorry?

‘You said you wanted to remove any uncertainty, but I don’t understand what you mean.’

Erland pursed his lips and glanced at the woman representing the university board, who took over: ‘When a student comes forward to report the kind of experiences Tova has outlined, it is our duty to take that person seriously,’ she said. ‘Otherwise, our reputation would be damaged, and student confidence in us would be eroded. The matter has been raised within the student body, and we are under considerable pressure to act.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Spencer said. ‘I’ve said it’s all nonsense. You’ve spoke to Malin, who was also Tova’s supervisor. She can confirm that Tova is lying.’

‘Unfortunately, that is not the case,’ Erland said. ‘Malin doesn’t know what happened when you were alone with Tova. In addition, other points have emerged which we must now take into account.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like your emails to Tova, for example.’

Spencer blinked.

‘Emails?’

Erland removed a sheet of paper from a plastic folder and pushed it across to Spencer, who read through it with mounting astonishment.

‘What the hell . . .?’

The woman from the board agreed.

‘That’s exactly what I said. What the hell has got into Professor Lagergren? You just can’t take liberties like that!’

Spencer looked in disbelief at the printed messages.

‘I didn’t send these,’ he said, pushing the sheet of paper away. ‘For a start, I don’t communicate with my students by email, and secondly I would never express myself in that way.’

‘They come from your email account, Spencer.’

‘Bloody hell, anybody could have sneaked into my office and sent them! This isn’t the CIA; my computer is open for anyone to use if I forget to lock my door when I leave!’

‘Let’s just calm down,’ Erland said in a desperate attempt to assert his authority. ‘You have to understand that we cannot simply assume that someone else sent these messages. And given the gravity of the content and the concrete nature of the accusations, we have decided to advise Tova to make a formal complaint to the police.’

Spencer felt the colour drain from his face.

He looked at the messages again. Three of them.

‘Tova, it’s unfortunate that you have chosen not to accede to my demands. Sadly, it looks as if your dissertation will suffer if you do not do what I have asked you to do. Come up to my office after 7 p.m. tomorrow and I’m sure we can reach an agreement. Spencer.’

In spite of himself, he laughed out loud.

‘This is absolutely ridiculous. I’ve never seen these messages, and I certainly didn’t write them. I . . .’

He broke off.

‘Let’s go to my office and check my messages,’ he said. ‘If they really did come from my computer, they should be in the “Sent” folder.’

‘And if they’re not?’ said the board member. ‘That could simply mean that you’ve deleted them.’

Spencer was already on his way out of the room, heading towards his own office down the corridor. The rest of the group followed hesitantly. Spencer was limping, because he had left Saga behind in her buggy; without a stick or the buggy to lean on, his leg ached more than usual.

It took a couple of minutes to log in, but it was long enough for him to start feeling extremely nervous. He used email far too infrequently to bother organising his folders. The messages someone else had sent could easily be sitting there in the ‘Sent’ folder waiting to be discovered, he realised as he clicked through the menus with a trembling hand.