Without a Trace (14 page)

He still had the notebook, though, where he had scribbled down information about her disappearance. Viola Söderland had vanished from her villa in Djursholm on the night between 22 and 23 September almost twenty years ago. Her bag, passport and wallet were still in the house; the front door was unlocked. There was a broken vase on the hall floor, but apart from that, there was no sign of disorder in the house.

Where on earth could he have put the video-tape?

He remembered recording the programme. The editorial team had gathered at work to watch it, but he had chosen to watch it at home with his wife, and had even taped the announcer’s remarks before and after the programme as well. It had been broadcast on 13 April. The nominations for the Best Journalism Award were made public on 8 November that year. He hadn’t been surprised when he won. Everyone who had seen the programme had been convinced that Viola Söderland was alive. He’d had no interview with her so he couldn’t show footage of her in front of a newspaper with the day’s date on it, but he had provided practically everything else. How she had planned her flight in advance, how she had fled one night through a pitch-black Sweden and left the country over the border to Finland at Haparanda.

He even knew where she had stopped to refill her car: a Mobil petrol station in Håkansö, forty kilometres south of Luleå on the E4. He might not have had current footage of her, but the logical conclusion was that Viola Söderland had taken refuge in the recently resuscitated state of Russia. She would hardly have stayed in Finland after driving through Customs in Torneå, on the Finnish side of the border, and could have reached Russia before anyone had even noticed she was missing back home in Sweden. It was harder to predict where she might have settled. By the Black Sea, perhaps, or in one of the resorts along the shore of the Caspian, if she was after sun. In Moscow or St Petersburg if she wanted culture and metropolitan life. He had travelled to all four places and had filmed interior and exterior shots so that viewers would have an idea of the sort of life Viola might be living now. By that point viewers would be so convinced of the elements of Viola’s dramatic flight that they would confidently expect to see her in the next shot.

It was a very good documentary. He had always been pleased with it, the crowning glory of his career.

Now it existed as nothing more than a lie on the internet.

*

I’ve never seen him cry before.

Silence falls. We cease to exist.

I’m here, I say, everything can be as it was, but he doesn’t reply. I’m not getting through: his eyes shy away, his back is angular and pale.

The world becomes completely grey, dense as concrete. You can’t breathe concrete.

And I make up my mind.

*

Kristine Lerberg lived in a brown brick villa surrounded by woodland, not far from the water. Not that she actually had a sea view. Nina parked her car in the drive. The house lay dark and silent. The curtains were closed, but Miss Lerberg had said she’d be at home.

Nina got out of the car and locked it with the remote. The gravel path had been raked, and last year’s leaves were gone from the lawn. A few cowslips were poking up by the walls of the house. A row of half-dead plants lined the path – Nina thought she recognized the leaves as tulips. The flowers were gone, the stalks nipped off halfway down. Deer, probably.

The porch was made of well-oiled pinewood. The bell set off a three-tone ringing that echoed inside the house. The door opened a crack as someone inside shouted: ‘Isak, no, don’t open it!’

A little boy was standing in the doorway, looking up at her with big eyes, a bubble of snot hanging from one nostril.

‘Hello,’ Nina said. ‘My name’s Nina. Is your auntie at home?’

The door flew open. Kristine Lerberg grabbed the child’s arm, wrenching his shoulder, and he stumbled backwards, his face contorting into a sob. She held him behind her and gave Nina a hostile glare. ‘Are you from the press as well? No comment!’

‘Nina Hoffman, National Crime Unit,’ Nina said, as calmly as she could, holding up her ID.

Kristine Lerberg hesitated for a few seconds, then took a step back. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Come in.’

They shook hands. The child howled. Nina shut the door behind her. The hallway was very dark. Two more children were visible further along the gloomy corridor, a younger boy and a toddler. The toddler started to cry in sympathy with her elder brother. Nina took her shoes off and hung her jacket on a hook under the hat-rack.

‘There, there,’ Kristine Lerberg said, picking up the toddler. ‘Boys, go and play in the nursery. There, now.’

The older boy sniffed a few times and wiped his tears.

‘Can we watch
Bamse
?’ he asked.

‘All right,’ the woman said. ‘Do you know how to turn it on?’

The two boys disappeared into one of the rooms further along the corridor. The woman put a dummy into the toddler’s mouth and led the way into a dark, stuffy room.

‘I wasn’t supposed to be looking after them for so long,’ she said, sinking into a plush floral-patterned sofa. ‘Ingemar brought them over on Thursday evening and asked me to have them for the weekend. Do you have any idea how much longer they’re going to have to stay?’

She rocked the toddler frenetically on one knee. The little girl sucked at her dummy.

‘I can’t answer that,’ Nina said, pressing to start the digital recorder on her phone. This wasn’t a regular police interview, so there was no need to state the time, date and location.

‘Have you got hold of Nora?’ the woman asked.

‘Not yet.’

‘Can you believe it – abandoning your children like that? Have social services been informed? Don’t they have people on call any more? I’ve got a job to do.’

The theme-tune to
Bamse
, the little cartoon bear, echoed faintly from deeper inside the house. Nina studied the woman. She was Ingemar’s elder sister, fifty-two, never married. She wore her hair in a neat bob, greying naturally. She worked part-time as the financial manager of a construction company in Gustavsberg.

‘What did Ingemar say when he dropped the children off?’ Nina asked.

‘I’ve already spoken to one of your officers,’ the woman said. ‘Yesterday afternoon. Inspector Danielsson from the Nacka Police.’

Nina hadn’t known that: there was no record of it in the notes. Bloody amateurs. ‘I’m sorry that we have to keep disturbing you like this,’ she said. ‘This probably won’t be the last time that the police want to talk to you. Large investigations get a lot of resources, but I’m afraid they also make a lot of demands of witnesses and relatives.’

Kristine Lerberg nodded, apparently satisfied with this response. ‘Ingemar asked if I could look after them,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sure, I thought it was all a bit last-minute. But that’s what happens when you live alone. No one thinks your time matters …’

‘How did he seem?’

The toddler dropped the dummy and started to cry again. Kristine got up impatiently, picked up the dummy, then, holding the child, carried her out of the room. Nina heard her heels click towards the sound of
Bamse
. The crying stopped.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as she returned to the sofa. She sat down again and ran her hands over her knees to get the creases out of her skirt.

‘Was he happy? Tired? Upset?’

The woman’s eyes slid across the bookcase, as though she were looking for a memory among the ornaments. ‘He was rather short with me,’ she said. ‘When I tried to explain that I was thinking of going to a lecture at the Rotary Club on Saturday afternoon, about entrepreneurial spirit in Africa, he was annoyed. Asked when I’d suddenly become so interested in starting businesses abroad. I tried to tell him it wasn’t like that, and that if you’re a member, then—’

Nina put her hand on Kristine’s. ‘I understand it must be hard to talk about it,’ she said.

Kristine’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Is he going to be all right?’ she whispered, glancing hastily towards the corridor. ‘What am I going to do with the children if he doesn’t make it? And why hasn’t Nora come home? Where can she be?’

Nina looked hard at her. ‘When did Nora leave?’ she asked in a low voice.

The woman started to pick at the hem of her skirt. ‘Leave?’

‘Ingemar told you Nora had gone away when he left the children, didn’t he, and that’s why you agreed to look after them, in spite of the Rotary Club? When did she disappear?’

Kristine Lerberg cleared her throat. ‘On Wednesday evening,’ she said, once again looking towards the sound of
Bamse
. ‘They’d had a row. The children don’t know anything. When do you think I ought to tell them?’

‘What was the row about?’

Kristine Lerberg stood up. ‘Goodness, look at me, sitting here and forgetting my manners! Can I get you a cup of coffee?’

‘Sit down,’ Nina said.

She sat. Nina studied her hair, her slender hands, with their neatly manicured nails, her slim figure.

‘It was Ascension Day on Thursday, of course,’ Kristine Lerberg said blankly. ‘I had the day off. I’d been to church and then I went to the Liljevalch Gallery, and I’d only just got home and poured myself a glass of Chablis when Ingemar arrived – it must have been around half past four.’ She glanced at Nina as if that were an unsuitable time for a glass of wine. Nina didn’t say anything. ‘His eyes were red, as if he’d been crying. Well, that or drinking. The children were playing up. They do that when Nora isn’t around. She spoils them. “Nora’s left me,” he said. I didn’t believe him. Nora isn’t the sort who leaves anyone – she hasn’t got it in her.’

She pulled a paper handkerchief from her skirt pocket and blew her nose. ‘He said they’d had a row. On Wednesday. Nora had picked up her coat and walked out. She didn’t take her handbag, or her umbrella. She just walked out and closed the door. Do you remember how hard it was raining on Wednesday? She didn’t come home all night. Ingemar was beside himself with worry, said something must have happened to her. And then this terrible assault! When can I visit him? And what am I going to tell the children?’

She put her hands over her face and wept.

Nina let her cry, and waited until the sobs had died down. ‘How was Nora?’ she asked. ‘Was she depressed?’

Kristine’s eyes roamed round the room. ‘I don’t really know her that well. She always has so much to do with the children, and that house, and Ingemar’s always so busy … There’s that business with her thyroid, but depression? No, I don’t think so. What did she have to be depressed about?’ She ran a hand through her hair and pursed her lips.

Nina realized that she was jealous of Nora. ‘Where do you think she might be? A holiday home? Do she and Ingemar have some place they usually go to?’

Kristine shook her head.

‘What sort of coat was it?’

Kristine Lerberg wiped her face with the handkerchief. Her eye makeup had run. ‘What sort of coat?’

‘You said that Nora took her coat and walked out. When she left home. What sort of coat was it?’

Kristine screwed up her eyes. ‘I – I don’t know. Probably the one she always wears. An oilskin. Water resistant, I suppose. Dark grey-brown, maybe.’

‘Would you happen to have a picture of her wearing it?’

Kristine glanced round the room, as if a photograph might be lying there somewhere. ‘No one has albums any more. On the computer, perhaps.’

‘Could you take a look and see if you’ve got a picture of Nora wearing that coat, and send it to me?’

She handed over one of the business cards Lamia had printed for her, and Kristine took it without looking at it.

‘Do you know what the row was about? Did he mention that?’

Kristine blew her nose again and shook her head. ‘No. And I didn’t ask.’

Nina racked her brain for questions. ‘Did Ingemar and Nora have any help in the house? Anyone to help with the washing and cleaning, maybe watch the children sometimes?’

Kristine straightened her back and massaged her neck. ‘Definitely not. Nora took great pride in looking after her home herself. I helped out and watched the children whenever she had to go in for check-ups on her thyroid.’

‘Auntie Tine, why are you sad?’

The eldest boy, Isak, was standing in the doorway, arms hanging by his sides, eyes full of anxiety.

‘I think you should tell the children,’ Nina said. ‘Who else is going to?’ She picked up her phone and switched off the recorder, then got to her feet.

Isak watched her as she put her shoes and coat on and walked out.

The newsroom was almost deserted, standing empty and grey in the dull afternoon light. A few individuals sat around the open-plan office, enclosed in some sort of digital reality. The photographers had been rationalized away long ago and, these days, Picture-Pelle was alone, his face computer-blue over at the picture desk as he bought in amusing pictures from international agencies –
A kangaroo hopping about on a landing strip
, and other similarly important subjects. The website staff sat behind their screens updating the site, but almost all the reporters were out on jobs. The new demands for moving pictures meant that editors could no longer make a quick phone-call to get a quote: they had to send someone out in the rain to meet people who would speak in front of a camera.

Annika shook out her raincoat, then hung it on the back of her chair.

‘Shouldn’t we write something about this weird weather?’ Valter Wennergren said, wiping the rain from his face. ‘I mean, this isn’t normal.’

‘We’ve published so much about the weather this spring that it no longer sells,’ Annika said.

She glanced at Anders Schyman’s glass cubicle. Had he really enjoyed a slap-up meal at Ingemar Lerberg’s expense ten days before the paper had made the politician out to be a tax dodger on its front cover? Or had Lerberg just written a name on the receipt, any name, even though he was actually dining with someone else? But why choose Schyman’s? Okay, so they knew each other. But other than that?

And what was he up to now? Annika could see his big backside sticking up above the units by the glass wall while his desk was piled high with boxes and heaps of papers.