The Disappeared (3 page)

‘That’s a hell of a present.’

‘She was also given twenty-five thousand kronor to help her with her studies. Rebecca was the first person in the family to go on to higher education, and her mother was incredibly proud of her.’

‘Has anyone contacted her? The mother?’

Alex looked up.

‘Not yet. I thought I’d do it tomorrow.’

‘Not today?’

‘No, I want to see if we find the victim’s head and hands today. There’s no reason to act quickly. Her mother has already waited for such a long time; one more day won’t make any difference.

It was only when he had spoken the words that he realised how painful they were. One day could be a lifetime. He would have given ten years of his life for one more day with Lena. Just one day.

It hurt so much to be without her.

His hand trembling slightly, Alex slipped the piece of jewellery back into the bag.

‘What’s the staffing situation as far as your team goes? Can you take on such a big case?’ Torbjörn wanted to know.

‘I think so.’

Torbjörn looked dubious.

‘Is Rydh still on the team?’

‘He is. And Bergman. But she’s still on maternity leave with her daughter.’

‘Ah, yes.’

His colleague smirked.

‘She ended up with a bun in the oven from some old professor, didn’t she?’

He stopped smirking when he saw the expression on Alex’s face.

‘Talk to somebody else if you’re going to come out with that kind of crap, Torbjörn. I’m not interested.’

Torbjörn changed the subject.

‘But she’ll be back soon, won’t she?’

‘I think so. Otherwise, I have other investigators I can bring in. But it would be excellent if Fredrika came back very soon. Tomorrow, for example.’

Alex gave a wan smile.

‘You never know,’ Torbjörn replied. ‘Perhaps she’s tired of being at home.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Alex.

3

‘Tomorrow?’ said Fredrika Bergman.

‘Why not?’ Spencer replied.

Fredrika sat down at the kitchen table, completely taken aback.

‘Has something happened?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, come on, Spencer.’

There was a click as he switched on the kettle. His back told her everything she needed to know. There was something wrong.

She had been perfectly happy with their decision not to share parental leave equally. The future had been crystal clear: Spencer would stay married to Eva, and Fredrika would be the main carer for the child they were expecting. But then everything had changed. Spencer had chosen to tell his story little by little. A father-in-law with a hold over his son-in-law. A wife who demanded a lifestyle he couldn’t afford. A mistake in his youth that ended up shaping his entire life. And then – from nowhere – the strength to break free.

‘If you want to,’ he had said when she went to visit him in hospital after the car accident last winter.

‘If I want to what?’

‘If you want to live with me. Properly.’

For various reasons, she had found it difficult to answer right away. She and Spencer had been an unofficial couple for more than ten years; it would take time to get used to the idea that he could be hers for real.

Is that what I want? she had asked herself. Do I really want to live with him, or did I just think that was what I wanted when he was unattainable?

The question made her heart race. I do want to.
I do I do I do.

His disability following the accident had frightened her. She couldn’t bear the idea of him ageing any more quickly than he was already doing. She couldn’t cope with him becoming a burden at the same time as she was taking care of a newborn baby. Perhaps he sensed her fear, because he worked furiously to get better. He was still using a walking stick, but not for much longer.

The baby woke from her lunchtime nap, and they could hear noises from the nursery. Spencer beat Fredrika to it, and went to fetch Saga. She rarely cried when she woke up, but would lie there talking to herself. Or rather babbling, blowing little bubbles of saliva. She looked so much like Fredrika it was almost spooky.

Spencer came back into the kitchen with a smiling Saga in his arms.

‘You did say you’d want to go back to work.’

‘I know, but these things need planning. How long were you thinking of staying at home?’

‘A couple of months,’ Spencer replied. ‘No more than two.’

‘And then?’

‘Then she can go to nursery.’

‘We’ve got a nursery place from August, Spencer.’

‘Exactly. And before that we’ve got time for a holiday. It would work out perfectly if I stayed at home until the summer.’

Fredrika fell silent, gazing at his lined face. She had seen the way his love for Saga had taken him by surprise, how amazed he had been at the strength of his feelings for the child. But at no point had he shown any interest in taking paternity leave.

‘What’s happened, Spencer?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Don’t lie to me.’

His pupils dilated.

‘The department’s in a hell of a mess,’ he said.

Fredrika frowned, recalling that he had mentioned two colleagues who had fallen out. She hadn’t realised that he was involved.

‘Same arguments as before?’

‘Yes, except it’s worse this time. The atmosphere is terrible, and I feel it’s affecting the students.’

He pulled a face and put Saga down on the floor. Fredrika could see that the movement caused him pain.

‘Can you cope with Saga on your own all day every day? I could go back part time to begin with.’

He nodded. ‘That’s a good idea. I’ll still need to go over to Uppsala to attend meetings and so on.’

His eyes flickered to one side, unable to meet her gaze. He was keeping something from her. She could feel it.

‘OK,’ she said.

‘OK?’

‘I’ll talk to Alex. I’ll call in at work this afternoon and see what he says. He might be working on something new.’

A dismembered body in two plastic bags. Rebecca Trolle, according to Alex. Peder Rydh stared sceptically at the pictures of the body parts. The head and hands were still missing, but Alex recognised the navel piercing. DNA tests would either confirm or disprove his theory. Peder had his doubts. Admittedly, the piece of jewellery was unusual, particularly in view of the disc with the word ‘Freedom’ on it, but they couldn’t base the identification on that alone.

The damp earth and the plastic bags had played their part in preserving the body, but judging by the photographs it was difficult to imagine what the woman had looked like when she was alive. Had she been fat or slim? Straight-backed, or the kind of person who always lifted her shoulders a fraction too much, giving a hunched impression? Peder opened the file Alex had given him and took out a photograph of Rebecca Trolle, taken just before she disappeared. Pretty. Healthy. A freckled face, smiling broadly into the camera. A plum-coloured top that brought out the blue of her eyes. Dark blonde hair caught up in a ponytail. Confident.

And now she was dead.

She had had many strings to her bow. Twenty-three years old, and working towards a degree in the history of literature at the University of Stockholm. She had spent a year in France after leaving school, and was a member of a French reading group. She sang in the church choir, and ran a swimming class for babies one evening a week.

It made Peder feel tired. How could young people cope with doing so many different things at the same bloody time? He didn’t recall living that way himself, with so many irons in the fire, always on the way to a different activity.

She had been single at the time of her disappearance. There was an ex-girlfriend who had been interviewed by the police on several occasions, and there were rumours of a new love, but no one had come forward and the police hadn’t managed to extract a name. She had had a lot of friends, all of whom seemed to have been interviewed at least once. The same applied to her tutors at the university, her colleagues at the swimming baths and the members of the choir.

Peder realised that the investigation had got absolutely nowhere. He was relieved that he hadn’t been involved in such a depressing case. He read through Alex’s notes in the margins of the documentation, and could see that the situation must have been desperate. In the end the police had started to wonder whether Rebecca Trolle might simply have decided to disappear. She had been upset by a quarrel with her mother, and this might have made her firm up her plan to spend some time studying abroad. Her father no longer lived in Stockholm: he had moved to Gothenburg when Rebecca was twelve. The police had spoken to him as well.

Rebecca had disappeared on a perfectly ordinary evening when she was on her way to a so-called mentors’ social event at the university. She had called her mother at about six o’clock and told her about the party. Then she had received a call from a mobile with an unregistered pay-as-you-go card. At seven o’clock her neighbour had met her in the corridor of the student hostel on Körsbärsvägen where she lived, dressed up and obviously stressed. There were witnesses who had seen her on the number four bus at quarter past seven, heading towards Radiohuset, the headquarters of Swedish Radio. This had puzzled the police, because it was in completely the opposite direction from the university. The friends who had been waiting for her at the party said that she never arrived. And nobody knew where she might have been going on the number four bus.

Just before seven thirty, she had been seen getting off the bus and walking towards Gärdet. There were no more witness statements from that point; it was as if Rebecca had been swallowed up by the earth.

Peder took out a map that had been used in the original investigation. All the people who had featured in the case in any way and who lived in the vicinity of Radiohuset had been marked on it; none had seemed more suspect than any other. There were only a handful of individuals, and they all had a viable alibi. None of them had arranged to meet Rebecca that evening. No one had seen her. Until now – if it was Rebecca’s body in those plastic bags.

The discovery had been made on the outskirts of Midsommarkransen. Was there anyone in the original investigation who had a connection with that part of the city? It was a long shot, but worth checking.

The case had been short on suspects. The analysis of Rebecca’s mobile phone traffic had been of no help; the last link to a mast merely confirmed that she had been in the vicinity of Radiohuset, after which all activity ceased. They hadn’t managed to find any enemies, but that didn’t necessarily mean they didn’t exist. Rebecca’s mother had mentioned a dispute with a colleague at the swimming baths, but that particular trail had quickly gone cold. The colleague had reacted with surprise, referring to the argument as nothing more than a trifle. In addition, he had had an alibi for the evening when Rebecca was reported missing.

Peder stopped in his tracks. Who misses a single girl the same evening she disappears? The first report showed that a male friend had called the police at eleven o’clock that night. Rebecca hadn’t turned up at the party as agreed, and she wasn’t answering her phone. The reaction from the police had been cool to begin with. Her parents were contacted as a matter of routine, but they hadn’t heard from her either. Her mother hadn’t been worried at first; her daughter was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. By two o’clock, the situation had changed. According to her mother, Rebecca still hadn’t been in touch with any of her friends, and her phone was switched off. Early in the morning, she was officially logged as missing, and the investigation was under way.

The person who had first called the police was one Håkan Nilsson. Why the police rather than Rebecca’s parents? Perhaps he didn’t know them. But why didn’t he wait? Why was he worried? Peder flicked through one document after another. Håkan Nilsson had gone out of his way to assist the police throughout the investigation: a friend who thought her disappearance was terrible, and wanted to help out. But why had Nilsson been more helpful than any of Rebecca’s other friends? He had printed posters, given an interview to the student newspaper. He kept on saying that ‘we’ were concerned, but there was no indication as to who ‘we’ might be.

Peder decided to mention it to Alex. He opened the database of residential addresses on the computer and ran a quick check on Håkan Nilsson. He had previously lived in the same student hostel as Rebecca, and his current address was Tellusgatan. In Hägersten. Which was in Midsommarkransen.

Peder stared at the screen. If it really was Rebecca Trolle in those plastic bags, then Håkan Nilsson had some explaining to do.

When Fredrika Bergman knocked on Alex’s door, he was slumped in his chair, his brow deeply furrowed. Fredrika had seen him only a few times since he was widowed, and she could have wept when she saw how much he had aged in just a few months. Although it went against the grain to admit it, she had noticed the same thing with Spencer. Both men had recently gone through difficult times, which had left their mark. She forced herself to smile.

‘Fredrika,’ Alex said as soon as he saw her.

His face broke into a warm smile that put her at ease. After a brief hesitation he got up and came around the desk to give her a hug. Strong arms around her body; she felt herself blushing.

‘How’s it going?’ she asked.

Alex shrugged. ‘Not too bad,’ he replied.

They sat down.

‘How’s your daughter?’

‘Saga’s fantastic. She’s almost walking.’

‘That’s early, isn’t it?’

‘Not really; she’ll soon be one.’

Fredrika glanced around the room. He had several photographs on the wall behind him. Photographs of his family. Of the wife who no longer existed.

Life’s a bitch and then you die.

‘We were talking about you earlier on today,’ Alex said.

‘Really?’

Alex immediately looked brighter, cautiously optimistic.

‘We miss you. We were hoping you’d be ready to come back soon, perhaps in the summer?’

Fredrika felt ridiculous.

‘Well actually . . . I could come back before then.’

‘Wonderful. When were you thinking of?’