The Chosen (45 page)

He was a man with no religious conviction. Everything he had done throughout his life had been based on his own internal compass, his own perception of what was right and wrong, good and evil.
The occasions when he felt with hindsight that he had done the wrong thing were few.

It took him only a few minutes to walk from the hotel to the address on Torsgatan where he had seen the woman enter the building. And this time neither Säpo nor the police were there. He
peered into the dark stairwell. No movement out on the street or inside the building. He assumed the block housed mainly offices, which were now empty. Most people had probably set off home through
the darkness.

To make dinner, or see what was on TV.

Put the children to bed, if they had any.

Things that Efraim knew others did, while he travelled far and wide to make sure that his people were safe and secure.

The light came on; someone was on their way out.

Excellent. He wouldn’t have to waste time trying to break in.

A young woman emerged, smiling at Efraim as she held the door open for him. He smiled back and quickly stepped inside. Allowed the door to close behind him.

The noise was unexpectedly loud.

Efraim set off up the stairs. If he had read the plaque by the door correctly, the office of Samson Security AB was on the third floor.

Samson.

Her new surname. It suited her; she had always admired the lion for its strength and invincibility.

Efraim took two steps at a time. Increased his speed, reducing the distance between them. If she was in the apartment, of course, which he thought unlikely.

But oh, how he wished she was.

Then he was standing outside her door. He rang the bell and waited. No one came. He rang the bell again. Waited again.

She obviously wasn’t there.

He took out the necessary equipment to open the door, and in seconds he was in the hallway. He smiled in the darkness. Anyone who knew anything about locks would realise immediately that
this couldn’t possibly be a company that specialised in security.

He didn’t switch on the main light; instead he went over to the windows behind the desks to see if they had curtains. Indeed they did; she hadn’t missed that detail. You had to be
able to turn on the light without anyone being able to see it from outside.

Efraim was virtually certain that no one was following him, but just in case he’d got it wrong, he wanted to make sure he minimised any possible damage.

Once the curtains were drawn, he switched on the desk lamp. He glanced around the room. Took in the sparse furnishings and thought that with such an unimpressive facade he would be surprised if
she’d managed to attract a single client.

There was a computer on one of the desks. Presumably the police hadn’t had a warrant to remove it.

Efraim started it up and went through the files on the bookshelf while he waited. Empty. He laughed out loud, then sat down and grew serious, reminding himself that he didn’t have much
time. Because he had one more job to do before he went to bed.

He was going to pay Fredrika Bergman a visit.

Make sure she understood the importance of not getting mixed up in things that had nothing to do with her.

Every war claimed its victims.

As far as Efraim was concerned, no war had been more significant than the one in which he was engaged right now. And he was ready to do whatever it took to emerge victorious from the
conflict.

The computer turned out to be just as easily accessible as everything else in the room. No password was required. He clicked his way around the system. The police would probably have needed some
time to realise how empty the document files were, if they had opened them, because everything was written in Hebrew.

There was no internet connection.

No word processing program.

It was rare that anyone made such an effort to embrace the minimalist approach.

He moved over to the document handling program. To his surprise he found an ordinary text file there.

Efraim felt as if he had suddenly developed tunnel vision when he read the name of the file.

‘To Samson’.

He knew that this time he was the lion.

He didn’t hesitate; he had to see what she had written. He opened the document, read the short lines she had left behind in the empty office.

I have seen the girl
I know who she looks like.
You said you suffered as much as I did.
But that’s impossible.
You went on to have two more children.
Congratulations.

Efraim couldn’t take his eyes off the screen. He read the words over and over again.

She had seen the girl.

Realised she was his.

But I didn
’
t know.

Efraim read the message one last time, then deleted the file. She hadn’t written one word about Polly, who had disappeared. Just his two newly discovered daughters.

As he left the building on Torsgatan, he thought about what that meant.

It was only when he was back in his hotel that he realised what she was telling him.

The knowledge made him go weak at the knees; he had to sit down on one of the sofas in the lobby.

Not only had Efraim deprived her of the victim she had selected.

He had also provided her with two new ones.

S
ometimes Mikael Lundell thought that Eden lived in a parallel universe.

One which bore no relation to his or anyone else’s.

‘Pack a bag and get a cab.’

They had two children, one of whom suffered from a number of allergies. You couldn’t just pack a bag and take off. You had to plan, work things out.

This time Mikael had got it all wrong. He had abandoned the cooking and started packing, which had been a mistake. The girls were hungry, and they were also starting to get tired, while
Mikael himself was so furious he felt like standing in the middle of the floor and screaming.

Why was there never any peace and quiet?

Why did Eden constantly come up with new ways of stressing out her family?

Tops and trousers, underwear and pyjamas. Comfort blankets and toys.

A furious yell from the kitchen sent him hurtling through the apartment.

Dani was sitting on the floor sobbing hysterically. Her sister was standing next to her, patting her on the head. Blood was pouring from Dani’s forehead.

‘She fell over,’ her sister said, pointing to the angular edges of the table leg.

Mikael picked her up, as always astonished at how light she was, even though she had been alive for such a long time.

He examined the cut on her head. Did it need stitches? No. Had she knocked out any teeth? No.

‘Does your head hurt?’

Dani howled something that might have been a yes.

‘Do you feel sick?’

Apparently not. He carried her to the bathroom where he had started packing a toilet bag. He cleaned the cut, found a plaster with a bear on it. When Dani had calmed down, Mikael carried her
back to the kitchen. Both girls were obviously tired, and kept glancing over at the stove; Daddy had promised to cook their favourite tea.

Fuck Eden and her whims and fancies.

‘Okay girls, guess what we’re going to do?’

Two expectant little faces.

‘We’re going to order pizza and eat it here before we leave. What do you think about that?’

Their eyes lit up. Mikael picked up the phone; he had no intention of leaving the apartment until the girls had food in their stomachs.

Half an hour later, the pizzas still hadn’t arrived. Mikael called the restaurant again, and was told the pizzas had been sent out.

‘But they’re not here,’ he said, unable to hide the irritation in his voice.

He threw down the phone and went back into the kitchen.

‘I’m sorry everything’s such a mess,’ he said to the girls. ‘Daddy will fix us something to eat.’

He took some mince out of the fridge. They would have spaghetti Bolognese as planned, and if Eden had a problem with that, she could bloody well come home from work.

Y
et another alibi had cracked like a window pane hit by a stone. This time it was Gideon Eisenberg’s.

Getting hold of someone with access to the bank’s database of clients and visitors wasn’t easy, particularly at seven o’clock in the evening.

‘I don’t care how they do it,’ Alex Recht bellowed. ‘This is an emergency. We need that information.’

Eventually they managed to contact an administrator who was still on the premises and was able to access the list of clients. She then called Alex personally to confirm that Gideon
Eisenberg had indeed had a meeting with a deputy manager at the bank between two thirty and four thirty the previous Wednesday, just as he had said.

‘Do you know whether the meeting actually took place, or whether it was just booked in?’ Alex wanted to know.

‘You mean could it have been postponed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Unfortunately I can’t tell from the records; sometimes staff forget to make a note if a meeting is cancelled or postponed.’

‘In that case I want to speak to the manager in question. Right now.’

The administrator realised the seriousness of the situation, and said that she would contact her colleague immediately and ask him to call the police.

Alex’s phone rang a few minutes later.

‘I have a very simple question,’ he said. ‘According to your admin staff, Gideon Eisenberg was in a meeting with you at the bank between two thirty and four thirty last
Wednesday. Can you confirm that the meeting actually took place?’

The answer came immediately.

‘No, it was postponed. Did I forget to make a note in the visitor database?’

Yes you did, you fucking idiot.

‘Why was the meeting postponed?’

‘Gideon rang and said he was ill.’

Alex ended the call with a brief thank you, and ran out into the corridor. He gathered his colleagues in the Snakes’ Nest. They listened as he explained the latest twist in the case.

‘We need to bring in Gideon and Carmen Eisenberg,’ he said. ‘Right away.’

He thought he ought to call Peder, tell him he was partly right: someone else had taken Polly.

He wished Fredrika was there. She would have been a godsend when it came to interviewing Carmen, but then again she could do that when her plane landed. It wouldn’t do any harm for Carmen
to sit and wait.

‘Are we sure that Gideon is the guilty party?’ one of his colleagues said. His expression said it all; he was far from sure.

‘No,’ Alex said. ‘But we now know that he doesn’t have an alibi. And we have Saul’s account, which I’m inclined to believe. So we have to bring Gideon in;
anything else is out of the question.’

They were out of the Snakes’ Nest as quickly as they had assembled there.

Alex went in one of the cars to the Eisenbergs’ apartment in Östermalm. Sitting in his office waiting from them to return wasn’t an option; there was too much adrenalin
coursing around his body.

He texted Diana from the back seat:

‘Will be late again. Love you. See you later.’

The car skidded on the snow which had not yet been cleared from the road. They were driving insanely fast, blue lights flashing, sometimes in the wrong lane facing the oncoming traffic. A
younger colleague was at the wheel, still hungry for the kicks everyone thought were a daily part of police work, but which in fact very rarely came along.

They couldn’t go fast enough for Alex. He was convinced they were running out of time.

They raced along Strandvägen towards Djurgården, then turned onto Styrmansgatan. As they passed the theatre and Nybrogatan, Alex thought about Peder, and his idea that they were
looking for two perpetrators who were at odds.

Alex wasn’t sure he understood what Peder meant. At this stage he wasn’t even convinced they were looking for two perpetrators. Gideon Eisenberg was no taller than one metre seventy;
he could easily have been the person who lay on the roof and shot Josephine, then worn shoes that were too big for him out on Lovön. The CSIs had said that while it looked as if the boys had
slithered and stumbled in the snow, the killer’s tracks were even and controlled. That could work if he had been wearing oversized shoes, making him move more slowly.

They had found absolutely nothing when Saul Goldmann’s office and apartment were searched. No murder weapon, no shoes. Alex hoped they would have more success with Gideon Eisenberg.

They pulled up half a block away. No one had forewarned the Eisenbergs; they had just assumed Gideon and Carmen would be at home.

Which they were, fortunately. Carmen answered the door, and Alex and two colleagues stepped into the hallway. Carmen was paler than any living person Alex had ever seen.

‘Have you come to see Gideon?’ she whispered.

Alex nodded.

‘He’s in the living room.’

They walked through the wide hallway to the living room door, and stopped dead.

‘I found him when I got home.’

Carmen’s voice was barely audible.

Gideon was hanging from a hook on the ceiling. Someone had taken down the chandelier and hanged him with a noose. CSI and forensics would determine if he had done it himself, but that was
Alex’s instinctive reaction.

‘He left this.’

Carmen handed him a sheet of white paper.

‘It was on the kitchen table.’

Alex took the paper and read the brief message.

Forgive me.

T
he plane landed twenty minutes ahead of schedule. The passengers got to their feet as soon as it stopped moving, and Fredrika Bergman took out her mobile phone. Her first call was to Spencer;
she missed his voice. Missed being close to him.

I
’
m home, darling.

He still sounded hoarse:

‘That was a short trip.’

‘It was no fun without you, so I hurried home to Sweden.’

He laughed quietly.

‘Did you manage to play your violin?’

Fredrika thought about the instrument she had taken with her; she hadn’t played it once.